Agile Project Management with Kanban

by Eric Brechner

Overview

With Kanban, every minute you spend on a software project can add value for customers. One book can help you achieve this goal: Agile Project Management with Kanban. Author Eric Brechner pioneered Kanban within the Xbox engineering team at Microsoft. Now he shows you exactly how to make it work for your team.

Think of this book as “Kanban in a box”: open it, read the quickstart guide, and you’re up and running fast. As you gain experience, Brechner reveals powerful techniques for right-sizing teams, estimating, meeting deadlines, deploying components and services, adapting or evolving from Scrum or traditional Waterfall, and more.

For every step of your journey, you’ll find pragmatic advice, useful checklists, and actionable lessons. This truly is “Kanban in a box”: all you need to deliver breakthrough value and quality.

Use Kanban techniques to:

• Start delivering continuous value with your current team and project
• Master five quick steps for completing work backlogs
• Plan and staff new projects more effectively
• Minimise work in progress and quickly adjust to change
• Eliminate artificial meetings and prolonged stabilisation
• Improve and enhance customer engagement
• Visualise workflow and fix revealed bottlenecks
• Drive quality upstream
• Integrate Kanban into large projects
• Optimise sustained engineering (contributed by James Waletzky)
• Expand Kanban beyond software development

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780735698994
Publisher:	Pearson Education
Publication date:	02/25/2015
Series:	Developer Best Practices
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	160
File size:	4 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Eric Brechner is the development manager for Microsoft’s Xbox Engineering Services team. At Microsoft, he has also been development manager for Xbox.com, engineering learning and development, and Office Media Store. He has previously worked at Boeing, Silicon Graphics, Graftek, and Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The author of a book and blog on software best practices (as I. M. Wright), he holds eight patents and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics.

Table of Contents

Introduction     ix
Chapter 1: Getting management consent     1
An open letter to your manager     2
Problem     2
Solution     2
Risks     3
Plan     3
Moving forward     4
Checklist     5
Chapter 2: Kanban quick-start guide     7
Step 1: Capture your team’s high-level routine     7
Step 2: Redecorate your wall     8
Step 3: Set limits on chaos     10
Step 4: Define done     13
Step 5: Run your daily standup     14
Troubleshooting     17
Checklist     24
Chapter 3: Hitting deadlines     25
Populate your backlog     25
Establish your minimum viable product (MVP)     27
Order work, including technical debt     28
Estimate features and tasks     29
Track expected completion date     31
Right-size your team     33
Basic approach     34
Advanced approach     35
Checklist     37
Chapter 4: Adapting from Waterfall     39
Introducing Kanban to a Waterfall team     39
Working in feature teams     42
Completing features before starting new ones     43
Dealing with specs and bugs     44
Specs     44
Bugs     45
Engaging with customers     46
Celebrating performance improvements     48
Rude Q & A     51
Checklist     56
Chapter 5: Evolving from Scrum     57
Introducing Kanban to a Scrum Team     58
Mapping the roles and terms     60
Evolving the events     61
Celebrating performance improvements     62
Rude Q & A     65
Checklist     70
Chapter 6: Deploying components, apps, and services     71
Continuous integration     72
Continuous push     75
Continuous publishing     77
Continuous deployment     79
Checklist     83
Chapter 7: Using Kanban within large organizations     85
Deriving a backlog from big upfront planning     86
Ordering work based on dependencies     87
Fitting into milestones     91
Communicating status up and out     92
Dealing with late or unstable dependencies     94
Late dependencies     94
Unstable dependencies     95
Staying productive during stabilization     98
Checklist     100
Chapter 8: Sustained engineering     101
Define terms, goals, and roles     101
Consistent vocabulary     102
Challenges and goals     102
Define roles and responsibilities     103
Determine SE ownership     104
Lay out support tiers     105
Tier 1     106
Tier 2     106
Tier 3     106
Collaborate for efficiency     106
Triage     106
Quick-solve meeting     108
Implement Kanban SE workflow     108
Escalations     109
Bugs/Other Work     109
Kanban tools     111
Troubleshooting     112
Checklist     115
Chapter 9: Further resources and beyond     117
Expanding Kanban to new areas of business and life     117
Scaling Kanban up, down, and out     118
Personal Kanban     120
Mixing Agile and Lean with Kanban     120
Why Kanban works     123
Single-piece flow     124
Theory of constraints (TOC)     124
Drum-buffer-rope     126
Improving beyond Kanban     128
Critical chain     129
Lean development     130
Global optimization     132
Checklist     136
Index     137
About the author     145