Case Studies - DevOps

This is an insightful case study, analyzing the intricate details of initial applying of a Kanban system to a software development. The case study was focused on a 9-people team, working for BBC Worldwide, over a 12 month period.
The study encompasses every aspect of the Kanban-associated change, analyzing the boards, the daily meetings and the accompanying analysis. There is also a look at the importance of the office set-up, the display of information radiators, the right approach to work and of cooperation.

This is a great example of applying Kanban for typical service work - a fictional helpdesk environment, where the team was staring to do Kanban from scratch.
Find out how easy it was to get started and how big productivity increase was achieved through very little change and effort.

A Kanban board is not necessarily the most complicated thing under the sun, but if you’ve thought that it’s impossible to fail at creating a good one, you may have been wrong. Here is a great example of what not to do and what to keep in mind in order for the board to stay true to the actual process.

In the third article in the series, Eli presents us a situation, in which Kanban is used to track the progress of a short term project while staying on top of the equipment being the project’s subject.
The goal here is to manage the project and refrain from generating additional costs associated with software tracking, equipment deploying, training or doubling up the effort.

Kanban can be applicable to many areas of IT, such as software development, technical support and development. This article opens a series on implementing Kanban and improving IT processes by using this method. Here, we’re being shown the historical and new approaches to Kanban, with special applications to many areas of IT in the later parts.

In this Kanban example you will learn how a small development company working in a B2B and B2C sectors modified their current processes and started making significant improvements. Their aims were to provide better visibility and measurement. Learn why establishing valuable measurements, regular revisions and constant improvement is crucial for achieving your business goals.

This case study showed the implementation of Kanban method at a web development company, that provides wide range of services for large academic publishers. Kanban was adapted by a three-people support team, that was facing numerous problems, particularly tasks sizes varied from couple minutes to several weeks. The team created a blank magnetic Kanban board with cards and set a WIP limit. After a short time, the team members observed significant improvements in task orientation and process visibility.

In the last article of this series, Eli Weinstock-Herman discusses some of the most popular issues with Kanban implementation and brings the concept of continuous improvement closer to our understanding.

Whether you’re a Scrum, XP, Waterfall or any other Agile method’s fan – you’ll be sure to agree, that the one goal of using a visual board is radiating the information onto the team. Meaning – making sure that each team member knows where exactly in the process a task is, how much work is still left to be done, what’s in progress and what has been completed. What makes Kanban different though?

Software development teams usually have multiple stages to complete before the software is ready, from requirement analysis and planning, design, implementation and finally testing and maintenance. In this, second, part of Derick’s journey of Kanban introduction to his team, he brings us closer to the splitting up of a process to make it represent the actual work better.

Have you ever heard of a software development pipeline? Did you experience problems with communicating to your team members the status of your current tasks in the middle of the process? This article answers your questions about how will you know when work in one column is done and ready to be pulled into the next one. Simple and helpful.

It’s common for game development teams to start the process with Scrum and in later stages switch to Waterfall, ending up with a combination of the two. Clinton Keith wants to introduce the ideas of Lean and Kanban to this situation. There is the possibility to improve such processes with Lean, without abandoning Agile practices.

If you’re running a relatively small team, but your process is built of many steps, it’s clearly impossible to assign one person to one type of work only. Your team is forced to divide their time into different types of work, and this in turn puts an additional strain on the workflow. Find out how Kanban can provide help in such situations and learn of the two basic steps required for its implementation.

This is probably one of the most inspiring stories of Kanban implementation you have ever read. It has all started at Sandvik AB in 2009, with three people who wanted to increase their delivery capability. Today, Kanban method is present in more than 60 of Sandvik’s teams.

After reading Henrik Kniberg’s book “Lean from the Trenches”, Bart Vermijlen and his team decided to test the combination of Scrum and Kanban method for managing a new project for an international customer. In this article he describes how they got started and what they achieved by implementing Kanban board, also what were the problems along the way.

Kanban is a project management technique used, among others, in software development, known for facilitating good quality deliveries. Matt introduces us into some of the practices he has been using as part of Kanban, while working on the BBC Worldwide team in 2013.