PKAB | 1 Day
Increase your team’s flow and throughput by pairing Kanban with Azure Boards. This one-day course introduces Kanban’s principles and core practices, then shows how an agile team configures and uses Azure Boards to visualize work, limit WIP, and manage for flow. You’ll work in teams, in a shared project on a common case study, putting each practice to use the way a real agile team would.
Who should take this course?
This course is for all members of a software development team, especially those who create and refine a product backlog or plan and execute the work. It’s equally valuable for people outside the development team, including managers, Scrum Masters, coaches, and other stakeholders interested in establishing and improving flow. Teams currently practicing Scrum should consider attending too, since Kanban is a great complementary practice for managing and improving flow. For more, read this guide.
Course Content
This course progressively builds your fluency with Kanban and Azure Boards, from core practices and workflow visualization to limiting WIP and managing for flow with flow-based metrics. You’ll work hands-on in teams on a common case study, the way a real agile team would.
1. Introduction to Kanban
- Kanban overview and core practices
- Kanban support in Azure Boards
- Creating and configuring a project
- Managing a product backlog
- Hands-on lab
2. Visualizing the Workflow
- Kanban board overview
- Kanban board vs. backlog vs. taskboard
- Task checklists and inline tests
- Defining and mapping the workflow
- Creating the board columns
- Making policies explicit
- Definition of Done
- Classes of service (swimlanes)
- Filtering the board
- Keyboard shortcuts
- Hands-on lab
3. Limiting WIP
- Work in Progress (WIP) overview
- Visualizing and setting WIP limits
- Creating a pull system
- Splitting columns into doing and done
- WIP limit challenges
- Identifying and mitigating bottlenecks
- Hands-on lab
4. Managing for Flow
- Flow-based metrics: WIP, cycle time, throughput, age
- Cycle time vs. lead time
- Little’s Law
- Cumulative Flow Diagrams
- Scatterplots
- Flow analytics tooling
- Monte Carlo simulation
- Achieving flow and predictability
- Hands-on lab