Kanban for Software DevelopmentVisualize your development workflow!

The Kanban method is usually associated with one of two industries. Automotive manufacturing, where it originated in the 1950s, and software development, where, in the 2000s, it reached its newer form, and from where it spread to other areas of knowledge-based workflows. What made Kanban fit the purpose so well?

Visualize the process and limit WIP

Developing software is a complex process of identifying and analyzing the customer needs, designing solutions, coding them, testing, and reviewing. Sounds straightforward enough. But the difficulty stems from the nature of software and code itself. New features and changes do not exist in a vacuum but need to integrate with the existing code.

With development projects spanning months or years and seeing a parade of developers working on them, each with their potentially different approach, the complexity, and inter-dependency of modules increase significantly. That is why keeping track of what solutions can work, which ones won't, what will break other elements, etc., becomes a managerial headache.

Kanban for Software Development

Kanban delivers an answer: visualizing the workflow and limiting the number of items the team can process at once. Why visualize? A complex flow can be hard to grasp mentally – seeing it in front of you makes that easier and removes the burden of keeping the sequence of interconnected steps in your head. Limiting work in progress (WIP) lets the team leave the overwhelming flow of tasks and gain a single-item focus. When you make it a rule that, e.g., each developer can only work on one item at a time, their minds are free not to care about the rest of the board until they finish their current task. One-item focus means better concentration, hence higher quality of work, fewer bugs – all adding up to faster development.

Accelerated software development

Kanban Tool provides intuitive and powerful project boards for managing software development. Within minutes from setting up an account, through clean design and built-in WIP limits, you can get the team to map out their process on the online-hosted board, set a limit per person or per stage, and get to work in peace. Both co-located and distributed teams will benefit from having the same, at-a-glance, real-time updated flow of tasks in front of them. It takes all aspects of their work: task contents, Git links, due dates, assignments, comments, and performance metrics, and puts them into one, shared space, accessible from wherever the team members are.

Accelerated software development with Kanban Tool

Supercharge team collaboration and increase your business profitability

Working with Kanban will create process transparency for the team while giving the stakeholders insight into the progress in real-time. It opens up new collaboration opportunities for team members. Furthermore, Kanban creates new levels of understanding along the development-client communication channel, as well as on the development-management front.
The commonly seen benefits of applying Kanban to software development processes are:

  • Higher completed vs. started tasks ratio, which directly translates to increased processing speed
  • Shorter time to market for new products & features
  • An end to multi-tasking, which facilitates better focus, and higher code quality
  • The feasibility of using smaller batch sizes, which diminishes project risk and maximizes process throughput

Try Kanban Tool to test the above claims in a real development scenario. With a readily available software development board template and a board editor that will help you tweak the board to any specific needs, you'll get the flow ready in minutes. Thanks to Kanban Tool's uncompromised ease of use, you needn't worry about the developers having to climb a steep learning curve – the application works for the team, not against them, like some of the available complex software development tools.

Focus on software development

Kanban Tool lets you create, manage and control software development projects fast and with incredible ease. Embrace being able to focus on working, not on managing work!

Kanban Software Development

Kanban Tool powers over 25,000 small and large businesses.
These are just a few of Kanban Tool's happy customers:

Kanban Tool customers