Presentation: Implementing kanban for services team

This post share the presentation “Implementing kanban for services team” based on the different posts on Kanban shared here.

Presentation: Implementing kanban for services team

Feel free to share feedback!!!

Does Agile enforce team spirit or teamwork is enough?

One of very much overrated characteristics of Agile/Lean process is the team spirit along with teamwork. When ever we talk about the process we also talk about empowering the team, self-sufficient team, self organizing team etc. etc. The big question is does the process itself enforce the team spirit. It may demand for teamwork from each individual but how the team spirit actually works.

Teamwork

Teamwork is simply work performed by a team.

We are not yet analyzing the quality of teamwork yet, which can be communication, coordination, support etc.

Implementing Kanban for Services team

Kanban is well-known Lean process used in manufacturing industry and further in Agile Software Development also. In this post we will see how we can implement the system for different services teams like Operations, IT, Network and Help Desk etc. How push and pull system in place work for these teams. How a typical Kanban board looks like for these teams. How Kanban plus Scrum can be extended to accommodate specific requirements. The challenges in implementing Kanban for these teams and the need for retrospectives and continuous improvement for the same.

Kanban in General

Kanban is a Signal Card used in any pull system. It is about visual flow of value through the system by eliminating waste by pull system based on limiting work in progress and improving the flow process continuously. It is based on different Lean principles like delivering Customer Value, Eliminating waste, Pull system, continuous improvement etc.

It has been very well adapted in manufacturing industry and further in Agile Software development. In this post we will discuss further how the same process can be integrated with different Services teams also.

Services Team?

Think of some complex scenario where you have some services team, where there is continuous flow of services:

• Operation Team: Team handling regular maintenance activities for some website to keep it running all the time.
• Infrastructure/Network Team: IT team taking care of all the infrastructure/network activities inside an organization.
• Services Team: Any other services team handling end users to provide some kind of services.
• Help Desk: Team helping users in resolving their queries.

Using GreenHopper to manage multiple teams in Agile

Managing single team in a project using any such tool sounds like a simple job but imagine a project with multiple teams having same/different backlog and accordingly sprint/milestone releases etc. Having a tool which provide a lot of flexibility and customization to help in managing all these requirements for different teams and management too seems like very challenging task. The question is to find the best solution which fits to everyone involved in the process. In this post we will explore such different requirements and will see how we can configure GreenHopper to meet such requirements.

Think of some general scenarios where team members and management might have some questions like,

• What if there are multiple teams in a project?
• What if all these teams have parallel releases for some major/milestone release?
• What if all teams share the common backlog?
• What if all teams should have their own backlog which is just sub set of whole project backlog?
• What if all teams work on different functionalities?
• What if all teams share the same code base repository?
• etc. etc.

The basic question we are targeting here is that how we can use Greenhopper to configure the tool for multiple teams and choose the right implementation approach which suits best to the teams.

Complex Scenario?

Simple scenario the project consist of single team and like any other jira project, which can be handled by single jira project. Think of complex situation where you have multiple teams working in the project.

Using Jira & GreenHopper for Backlog Management

In this post we will cover what Jira & GreenHopper offers in terms of backlog management. How you can use it to manage the different requirements of your Agile team? How to use the combination to integrate the work of different teams? What are the different functionality provided by the tool?

Product backlog

From previous post Choosing the Right Backlog Management Tool , the different parties involved in the development process of the product involved can be,

• Design Team,
• Development Team
• QA Team
• Management Team
• End Users feedback

You can have different teams involved in getting the job done and you need a tool which can integrate the work done by these different teams. Tool which can provide you better integration between all these teams, which can streamline the process of communication between teams and along with that which can also provide the single overview of backlog of all these teams.

The Atlassian Product Family