Agile Project Management with Kanban

by Eric Brechner

Think, "Kanban in a box." Imagine you ordered Kanban for your team, and got the box delivered to your door. You open the box and right on top is a quick-start guide. Being a novice, you follow the guide, and quickly get up and running. As you become more experienced, the other box contents address common advanced issues you'd face, like right-sizing teams, estimation, hitting deadlines, transitioning from Scrum or Waterfall, deploying components and services, and using Kanban within larger organizations.
Real-world experience from a direct practitioner working on Xbox and Xbox.com
A concise, pragmatic, and easy-to-read guide with clear, fresh, and hard-won guidance
Using Kanban within larger organizations - how to deal with upper management, planning, and dependencies

Genres: Business, Management, Nonfiction, Technology, Reference, Leadership, Software

160 pages, Paperback

First published February 25, 2015

Reviews

[Rod Hilton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a pretty good book introducing Kanban to teams. There are some overview chapters on Kanban in general, some specifics about implementation and issues that can arise, as well as specific chapters on transitioning to Kanban from Waterfall or from Scrum, and how to make Kanban work in an Enterprise.

I switched to Kanban at my last company, but the various agile coaches and experts largely handled the specifics. I loved Kanban, and tried to introduce it to my next company, but unfortunately that put me in the position of being the agile expert, and I lacked the knowledge to really make it stick. My typical pain points are actually using the process to come up with predictions for time-to-completion of work, which is only worsened by the fact that my last gig was part of the #NoEstimates movement and I can't figure out how to help my product owners and management types know when to expect work to finish, putting me in a position of advocating something that I know works, but cannot actually help make work.

I picked up this book because it was highly rated and very short, so I hoped it could get me up to a point where I'd be able to help my teams be more effective at implementing the kind of process that I have been advocating. It did a decent job of accomplishing this, I definitely know more now than I did (enough to realize how frustrated I am with JIRA as a Kanban tool), but I found the bits on predictive engineering and particularly estimate-less planning (which gets a sidebar mention with nothing else) lacking.

Definitely worth a read if you're interested in Kanban or looking to bring it to your team. The short length makes it an excellent book to introduce team members to Kanban as a 'required reading' sort of thing, and the chapter organization makes it easy to skip chapters that aren't relevant, such as chapters on transitioning from Waterfall (if you're not a Waterfall organization).

I'm still looking for the "perfect" Kanban book that's short, simple, straightforward, and answers all of my questions without presenting Kanban as a magic bullet. Most of these books present a sunshine-and-rainbows view of engineering without getting into the actual issues that can arise in Kanban with advice for how to deal with them, and this book isn't much of an exception to that. I haven't found this theoretical perfect book yet, but so far Agile Project Management with Kanban is one of the better candidates.

[Andrei ILchenko · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books on managing software development projects I’ve read. The density of useful information is very high, nearly every page is full of interesting insights. Thanks to this the book is just around a hundred pages long and can easily be digested in a few days.

Eric Brechner has done a stellar job explaining the fundamentals of Kanban and what makes it effective: visualisation, minimalism (less is more), queueing theory with its Little’s law; and the Theory of Constraints (ToC). As someone who read Eliyahu Goldratt’s “The Goal”, I found Eric’a explanation of project management with Kanban to be a most elegant application of the principles outlined on “The Goal”, nicely adapted for the real of software development.

Another pro is Eric’s prior real world experience with Scrum and Kanban on large projects at Microsoft. This book is a product of a successful practitioner, which hugely increases its value for me.

[Oleg Sych · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good overview of Kanban and supporting practices, strongly influenced by author's experience at Microsoft. While I agree that Kanban may be the best process for a large-scale company, some of the practices described in the book are questionable outside of Microsoft.

I feel that one particular practice Brechner recommends, defect Triage, is an anti-pattern. This practice is a relic of the waterfall process with multi-year release cycles Microsoft used to ship boxed products a decade ago, when a small group of people had to declare a product good enough to ship, regardless of how many customers weren't happy with "small problems". Just like medical Triage, this practice is appropriate when dealing with a disaster. In normal circumstances, the need of defect Triage is a sign of a problem because it means that some of your customers aren't getting the services they need from your product and may leave. Eliminating Triage during normal product development helps to focus on existing customers, quality and sustainable growth.

[BCS · Rating 4 out of 5]

Agile Project Management with Kanban looks at the way in which Kanban can be applied as an Agile technique whilst adhering to the Agile values and principles set out in the Agile Manifesto.

The book contains good examples of how to use Kanban boards as information radiators in Agile projects and how to identify bottlenecks and obstacles with a focus on controlling the work in progress (WIP). The book forms a good introduction to Kanban and whilst no prior Agile knowledge is required it would be useful to have at least some familiarity with key Agile concepts (e.g. Product Backlog) in order to get maximum benefit from the book.

Most Project Managers and practitioners using both traditional and Agile approaches are familiar with the Scrum framework and so the book also looks at how Kanban can work with Scrum. This hybrid methodology is known as Scrumban and is outlined in Chapter 5. The very essence of Kanban is on ‘pull’ technology and the book does a good job of explaining this from a ‘to do’ state to a ‘done’ state as part of continuous integration with examples.

The final chapter of the book explores the wider Agile concepts and thinking such as the Theory of Constraints (TOC) and also explains how Kanban can be used in a personal capacity rather than just for IT or software development projects.

The book is excellent value for money and is clearly laid out with the added benefit of being easy to read and follow. If the graphics and images were in colour this would certainly be a benefit to the overall user reading experience.

Review by Raj Sharma, MBCS CITP, Senior Project Manager
Originally posted: http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/...

[Krzysztof · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really loved Brechner's video (you can find it here https://youtu.be/CD0y-aU1sXo ) on agile project management with Kanban. He managed to turn an informal conversation into a product backlog and responded questions using the Kanban approach, grouping/ordering them, splitting the complex questions to prove the approach. He was witty, straight to the point, but also referring himself to the book quite often, so I borrowed it from a colleague.
Kanban indeed is so simple (or at least has such a lean learning curve) it can be explained in a short video. To my surprise the book wasn't as witty as the man in the video and didn't read very smoothly. It was only 120 pages but seemed to be overloaded with doubtful formulas, verbose description of processes and overcomplicating what was supposed to be so simple. Two first and two last chapters would definitely suffice for most readers. But would it still be a book then?

[Antonio · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a long time, I knew the koncept of Kanban in manufacturing, which was used in Toyota and later in many companies as part of lean management. But in this book, koncept of Kanban is used on the exemple of software developers as part of agile processes.

As I worked with a client on the optimization of the R&D department, I wanted to see if this concept is usable in the classic development of the product.

This is my assessment of the book Agile Management with Kanban by Eric Brechner according to my 8 criteria:
1. Related to practice - 4 stars
2. It prevails important - 3 stars
3. I agree with the read - 4 stars
4. not difficult to read (as for non-English native) - 4 stars
5. Too long (more than 500 pages) - short and concise (150-200 pages) - 4 stars
6. Boring - every sentence is interesting - 3 stars
7. Learning opportunity - 5 stars
8. Dry and uninspired style of writing - Smooth style with humouristic and fun parts - 4 stars



Total 3,875 stars

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great reference text for implementing Kanban in software teams. My application is medical research, so there were definitely parts that didn't apply to me, but I felt that Brechner did a great job making the system general enough to be applied to other industries. This could probably have been a blog post, but I understand that he would like to make money on this.

Not the most thorough, but certainly enough to get you started. This isn't a replacement for more extensive project management training, but it's a great place to start. 4/5

[Staņislavs Fisenkovs · Rating 4 out of 5]

8/10

Vērtīgs ieskats Microsoft izstrādes procesa vadībā līdz ar ievadu Kanban metodē. Autors apraksta dažādas Kanban ieviešanas situācijas - pārejā no tradicionālājām, kā arī Agile izstrādes pieejām, vai programmatūras uzturēšanas gadījumā. Līdzi nāk arī materiāli, formulas un ieteikumi Kanban ieviešanā projektā. Viegli lasāma, bez fanātisma par kādu konkrētu vadības metodi, kā arī bez gariem, liekiem iestarpinājumiem.

[Lewis Manalo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Working in game development, I've never been on a team that used Scrum well. About six years ago, my team (a specialized part of the greater dev team) adopted Kanban with great success, and I've used it in nearly every dev job I've had since.

Reading Brechner's book gave me a real understanding of the systems I've been using, and why the teams I've been a part of are so much more effective than those still using some bastardized version of Scrum. I highly recommend this book and its methods.

[Ahmad Bamieh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read this book to help me transition my team from SCRUM to Kanban.

Although I had to read/watch a lot more resources to be fully confident taking this step, this book was pretty good in capturing the essence of KANBAN and provided a pragmatic and prescriptive step-by-step instructions for implementing KANBAN within teams in an organization.

[Archyz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good intro to project management using Kanban, but it is not an extensive study. If you want just a glimpse into the topic, this is the right book in terms of size. If you want to explore the topic in more detail, this is a good starter to understand which topics are most relevant to you, and build upon them.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

First few chapters are great. They give a good overview of Kanban.
After the middle of the book, the author goes a bit all over the place and brushes over topics.
Overall, it's not a bad read but I preferred Kanban In Action as it focuses more on Kanban itself.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another quick work read that I read on a few sleepless nights. A very simple and straightforward book, but I like that this book is basically Kanban 101. It literally walks you through how to setup a team doing simple Kanban for those interested in trying it out.

[Philip Skogsberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely excellent introduction to Kanban for Software development. This book is not an in depth book about the theories underlying Lean product development and the Kanban method. It's a short, practical and unapologetic handbook for implementing Kanban in a dev team or organization.

[Tiago · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is really good at explaining and exemplifying kanban. I especially liked the later portion of the book where the author goes into details of why kanban works and what one can do to go "beyond" kanban.

[Uriel Alberto Fernandez Salazar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is really helpful if you are trying to help your team get better

I liked the clear and concise explanation of terms and topics. All the references to more sources of knowledge. And mostly, I liked the specific instructions to help start up with Kanban.

[Nash · Rating 5 out of 5]

The authoritative guide on using Kanban for development

Backed with years of large scale development, this book makes a compelling case and practical steps on how to implement Kanban in your dev team.

[Hendrick Mcdonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great overall summary of Kanban

I particularly liked how this book compares the advantages of Kanban over Scrums iterations. Good food for thought. The book is well laid out and goes directly to the most relevant topics. There’s little “fluff” in this book 👌🏽.

[Cathie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh

Nothing wrong with it but there isn’t any depth here. There is something off about idea that Kanban is an evolution from Scrum which is an evolution of waterfall.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read - I appreciate the real examples with Eric working at Microsoft during his Xbox projects!

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

All what you need to run almost any project

[Valia · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK for a book of this kind.

[Erika RS · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short, sweet, and to the point.

I've read other books on Kanban. This is, I think, the most practical of them. It doesn't spend a lot of time talking about theory. It doesn't spend a lot of time on case studies. Instead, it's a practical guide to using Kanban. As such, if you want to deeply understand why Kanban is so effective, or if you want to see how others are using it, it's not the right choice. But if you want something to point people at when they ask "How do I do this?", it's a great choice.

A slight detour into detail: One thing that this book emphasizes, which other presentations of Kanban don't, is that each column of your board needs to have its own done column. Done should not be indicated by moving something into the "in progress" column of the next section unless ready to be worked on. Without a separate done column for each section, it's harder to tell where the backlogs are.

[Juha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a good book for teams looking to evolve part Scrum. Kanban feels a natural evolution and I have adopted it on my team having worked in Scrum for years. This is a good book for introducing the topic to your team and management.

[Valentin · Rating 4 out of 5]

To the point. Lots of examples and "hands on experience".

[Dave M. Puhrmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good hands on approach to starting and then customizing Kanban for your specific application. Liked all the tips and tricks in the book.

[Betty · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is ok. It gives the basic knowledge about Kanban that is promises. It is bloated with unnecessary details and it can be summed up in a 2-3 page visual poster better than in all these pages. Most of the book is either a reference to chapter 2 (where the Kanban is discussed) or to chapter 9 (where the sources of income are cited). So a bit of a fluff between these two.

[Jim Cooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great intro to kanban, and it convinced me of kanban's value.