Question

Has anyone used the kanban method for software development management?

I am evaluating kanban as a technique and would be curious to hear from anyone who has actually applied it in practice as to how effective it is. I’ve seen questions like: is-anyone-using-kanban, kanban-vs-scrum, and apply-kanban-in-an-agile-team but they don’t address my concerns.

What I’m interested in specifically is:

1. Does it actually offer the advantages is claims in terms of dynamically identifying bottlenecks?
2. Is it easy to execute in practice, or does it have logistical challenges that you need to manage?
3. Does it scale well to project teams with many parallel streams of work and many developers?
4. How does it compare to critical path analysis (as implemented in MS Project), how is it different?
5. What other benefits can be gained from applying kanban?

Thanks.

Answer 1

In the article Applying Kanban to PC Deployment the Team has to account for the following equipment:

• 160 new PCs to be deployed
• 40 new laptops to be deployed
• 120 PCs and 10 laptops to be refreshed and redeployed

… we are exploring the use of Kanban to manage a short-term functional
project. This example focuses on using Kanban to create a transparent
process to track the flow of equipment through a number of complex
steps, without incurring additional costs for tracking software,
complex processes and training, or duplication of effort. Improved
uniformity or quality of the deployment process will also help improve
efficiencies in troubleshooting and repair times as well as ensure a
document-ably high level of conformance to software and licensing
standards.

The page above has also links to Kanban applied …

• to Tech Support
• to PC Deployment (see Quote above)
• to a Development Group
• Challenges, Additional Concepts, and Wrapup