Kanban and releases by example

kanban.md

Example 1, the scheduled release.

In this example, we release every 2 weeks.

Regardless of how much work is done, we release at the 2 week marker.

If for some reason we arrive at a point where we have a lot of work before 2 weeks ready to go out, we can optionally do an early release.

Note: This is sometimes called scrumban.

Example 2, the demo release.

Here, we only move a feature from "Testing" to "Ready for Release" once it has been demoed. This means it's a feature-by-feature relase as opposed to a sprint.

Example 3, avoiding the bottleneck.

We setup channels, such as backlog, doing, ready for testing, done. In each channel, we have a limit on what number of tickets can be in there. In backlog this could be limitless. in doing, this could be limited to the number of developers in the team, meaning no more than 1 task per developer. As a ticket flows from one channel to the other, a space reveals itself allowing a ticket in the previous channel to becomem a candidate for progression across the board.

Example 4, forever changing priorities.

A highly valued customer has excessive demands that act to prioritise the needs of the business. In scrum, you cannot just add tickets during the sprint, but in Kanban, this is a non-issue.