One of the key objectives of Agile software development is to reduce the time taken to go to the market while maximizing value. This is where it is important for the development teams to focus on things that can add more value. Trim the tail is an approach that a software development team can follow to get the job done while ensuring the best return.

Trimming the tail is a strategy that is associated with three different parts. The very first step would be to figure out the known social risks and technical skills. This has to be done as early as possible. After understanding the risks, it is possible to address them while running the tested features in smallest way possible. This should be done prior to the developments. In other words, this process has to be completed while the items are still on the backlog.

The second step in trimming the tail is to figure out the backlog items that are in a position to deliver the highest business value. Along with this understanding, it is possible to assign a high priority to the work and get them done in an effective manner. They will be implemented by the development team while running the tested features in the simplest possible way as well.

The final state associated with trimming the tail is to defer feature improvements and quality improvements back into the work queue, so that the development team is working to improve the overall value of the system. In here, the development team would implement a walking skeleton of the system and then proceed with the other developments, which can add more value into it. This will help them to release the basic product to the market that can add value to the business and introduce new features to it along with time.

— Slimane Zouggari

The Kanban Maturity Model (KMM) is basically a very powerful tool for the businesses, organizations, consultants, and coaches. The KMM is a well-known name in the Agile world and is consists of seven maturity levels for implementation. These seven maturity levels are as follows: Oblivious, Emerging, Defined, Managed, Managed Quantitatively, Optimizing, and Congruent. Different tasks are performed in different stages through ensuring high quality. Such high quality practices lead the organization towards the highest degree of maturity. On the other hand, improper application leads towards the lower degree of maturity. This Kanban model is very helpful and useful in showing the current skills of an organizations along with assisting how these skills can be assessed and improved. Most of the people consider this model as a reference model but in reality, it is actually more than just a simple reference model. It offers a roadmap to the organization through which they can enhance their evolutionary capacity in an effective way. This model is highly effective in creating good governance, alignment, unity, and a sense of purpose. This model can be used for a number of purposes such as the following.

Kanban Maturity Model is used in gaining a better knowledge and sense of achievement for the organization. This KMM model is used by various organizations to access and improve their current skills and performance.

This model is widely being used all over the world for the purpose of providing a number of amazing products. It is also being used for ensuring the delivery of high-end and quality-oriented services.

On top of all of its uses, this model is one of the best and top recommended model because of a very important reason. The reason is that the use of this model ensures the superior and desired business results and greater progress.

Sources

1. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323111344_The_Kanban_Maturity_Model_KMM_-_A_Framework_That_Makes_Organizations_More_Agile_And_Adaptable
2. https://www.kanbanmaturitymodel.com/
3. https://leankanban.com/

— Slimane Zouggari

What is Little’s Law?

During the mid of the 1900s, John little presented a law which is clearly related to business community. In this law, he presented that the company have equal ratio between the multiplication of rate of the customer arrivals by the time which a customer spends and regular number of customers of company, it is called Little’s law.

Its commonly used expression is L = λW, which is explained like this,

• “L” shows the average number of customers,
• “λ” is denoted for the customers arrival average and
• “W” is for time which customer spends in the system.

When the number of customers are increasing in a system and the arrival rate remains constant then average time of the customer will be increasing in the system. Simply we can say that when the number of customers is increased it means that the time required to serve each of them is also increased.

How is it used in Kanban?

If little’s law is used in Kanban it make sense and relationship between, average number of customers, average rate of customers and time spent by the customers in the system.

If customers arrive at the rate of 10 per hour, staying average is 0.5 per hour. Find the average number of customers in the system.
Here, λ= 10, W= o.5 then L=?

L= λ*W
L=10*0.5
L=5

There are different terms use in Kanban according to the Little’s law. The most common term WIP, Work in Progress is used.

WIP= rate of customers * spending time by customers, here WIP=L

The number of items on which team is working is denoted as WIP. In Kanban different things can be taken as a measurement unit such as, situations, cards, stories related users and more.

Why it matters?

Any system that mean waiting time then Little’s Law can be used there, in the real world situations measurement of inflow is difficult than measurement of outflow.  This is a general formula and its generality makes it easy to use and to be in different time related situations.

— Slimane Zouggari

What are classes of Services in Kanban?

Kanban is a board by which company’s agile development, set their goals and services and categorizes them into different classes.

In this context, Kanban has different classes of specific services that are change and unique to each other.

When we classify the services in different categories, then it becomes easy to understand and implement. It is beneficial to divide the work according to its urgency and its impact on the line of business. By doing this team of the company workers can do their project with more reliability and validity.

More often these classes of service are based on delivery time, cost of products, quantity and standards.

Why it matters?

Well, there are tickets which have classes of service that help in progress the tasks that are found on the board. We need to identify the most important tasks and need to do them first as they are needed to be done first. After selecting the tasks the time required to process a task and then all the issues in the task are resolved and the task is processed further. This is all you get when you are using the classes of services in Kanban board.

How is it used?

When the work items on which the team needs to work are distinguished on the basis of priority, then we can say that this is the class or services in Kanban. These items are treated according to the urgency then the team can make the reliable forecasts and the time frame in which the order needs to be delivered can be set so that it can be done in time.

This class of service is actually based on the risk information about the economic impact of the work item that can it be delayed or not.

Benefits

• The flow of work can be improved
• Delivery deadlines met
• Effective work
• Issues solved

It is clear that classes of services in Kanban ought to be used for effective work and less load on the team.

— Slimane Zouggari

Limiting the WIP (work in progress) means that it restricts the maximum amount of the items on which we are working in the Kanban board in order to set the workflow. If you are working on multiple items at a time then you should limit the WIP it will allow you to complete the single items in no time, eventually it will help the team to focus on the current going tasks and work effectively.

Now, when you are limiting the WIP then they can work effectively and their work processes can be enhanced for good. These limits are actually considered beneficial for the deadlines as it will be easy to meet the deadlines for the products, production rate will be increase likewise.

Benefits

We can say that limiting WIP is a valuable asset when working with the Kanban board. Let us have a look on the benefits more closely:

• When we are talking about agile development then limiting the WIP can help to make the identification of inefficiency easier, and the team’s workflow can be managed easily.
• We can see the improvement in the end product
• Smaller set of tasks can be done more efficiently by the team.
• The bottlenecks and the blockers become more visible.
• The issues that were a hurdle or were blocking can be understood by the teams and they can resolve them accordingly.
• Flow of work is attained when the blockers are removed
• The focus on the tasks is increased and task switching is reduced
• When the customers are getting the items on time, then increased feedback will be noticed from the customers.
• If the team is working smoothly on Kanban board from left to right and they are facing less overload of work then the efficiency of work is increased

No doubt, limiting the WIP is an imperative tool in the agile development and no one can deny its importance in Kanban board. There are a lot of benefits of limiting the word in progress and the work can be more effective in this way so it is recommended that you should limit the work in progress whenever needed.

— Slimane Zouggari

The Cumulative Flow Diagram, alternatively known as the CFD, is an excellent tool to determine and forecast pending projects. You can consider using it to determine the current status of the project, the percentage of work completed, its current progress, and the pending work stored in the backlog. You can read a CFD by understanding a Cumulative Flow chart, which is geared towards learning the issues in a project, cycle time of the project, and the probable completion dates of the projects. In addition, the CFD is also crucial for identifying the occurrence of bottlenecks in a project.

The above given diagram is a representation of a CFD, and it has highlighted the occurrence of tasks in individualistic stage of the process, which grows further with the passage of time. The color band represents each task in different column on a board. As apparent from the given diagram, it is apparent that the navy and blue areas indicate the incomplete tasks, the red area signifies the work in progress, and the purple area is a representation for the finished tasks.
When observing the CFD, it is highly imperative to pay heed to the red area, if it is subjected to a change with time, it shows the presence of bottlenecks in a project, which signifies that the project is more likely to be delayed.
In addition to that, the process of reading a CFD is comparatively simple and straightforward. The vertical axis given in the diagram represents the number of tasks associated with a project, and the horizontal line represents the timeline of the project. The occurrence of the curves in the diagrams indicates the number of items given in a timely perspective. The entire settings of the curves and axis are represented in a cumulative manner.
The use of reading a CFD is geared towards visualizing the process of the project and workflow across the time. This process could be utilized to score a customer-valued related work, which is furthermore inclusive of scrum and product development teams in an agile industry. In addition, familiarizing yourself with reading a CFD pertains to learning the significance of various areas of the diagrams, and the corresponding factors which influences it.

— Slimane Zouggari

Do you work in a team or a group? DO you want to improve the efficiency of your work? Various agile methodologies, especially kanban, are becoming more and more popular.
Have you ever heard about the kanban method before? Most people have not. But even if you never heard about it, you probably hung color papers out in your workplace with current work tasks. If so, you are already a little familiar with the classical method of project management called kanban.
When you work in a team, no matter how many people you work with, each of them has an own task list and simultaneously works on several tasks, projects or with several clients. Kanban methodology allows you and your company to systematize work, achieve the greatest efficiency and reduce costs.
Nowadays, we cannot imagine the project manager drawing graphs on the wall and fixing cards to it. Instead, there are services providing the kanban boards online. One of the services is Kanbanize. Let’s review its capabilities.

What is Kanbanize
Kanbanize is an online tool for managing tasks and projects, employees and shared interface features. Kanbanize allows you to balance the working process, keep time management and assess the staff. And also create several permissions, establishing a hierarchy within all team. Plus, you can print and export data to Excel, even create graphs and charts for analysis.
Kanbanize is known for its powerful analytics module and several diagrams with automatic filling. Kanbanize supports aggregate flow, cycle time, task distribution, and much more.

Key Kanbanize features:
● Privileges and roles of every user in a team.
● Mobile applications for Android and iOS.
● Statuses of tasks, for example, to do, in progress, done.
● The system is based on WIP (work in progress).
● Custom fields in tasks, so you are able to add everything you need.
● Reminders and notifications to ensure you and your colleagues do everything in time.
● Daily backup to prevent data loss.
● Technical online and phone support.
● Relations between tasks.
● Runtime policy — create your own rules for each project.
● Email integration.
● Timesheets and event log.
● HTTPS access.
● Custom domains.
● Dedicated cloud capabilities.
● A lot of free training and teaching materials.
● VPN access through Amazon VPC.
● LDAP integration.
● Kanban boards to modify your project in the most efficient way.
● Comments and metrics.
● Schedule in Excel.
● Branding managing.
● The colors of tasks, terms, and executors.
● Task templates.
● Complete task history.
● Attachments from your local PC and Dropbox.
● Export search results to Excel.
● Work in Helpdesk mode by e-mail.
● Solutions for lean project management, IT operations, software and product development, as well as agile marketing.
● Flexible plans.

Competitors
Trello is one of the most popular project management systems online, which is in high demand among small companies and startups. It allows you to organize your work effectively with kanban boards. The tool has a simple interface, provides almost unlimited free access, is very convenient and is able to integrate with other popular tools.
YouTrack. A task management system designed specifically for teams of programmers, developers, companies which use the agile project management method. Capabilities: time management, kanban boards, flexible reports with graphs and diagrams, customization and commenting on tasks.
Zoho Sprints. Web-based platform for agile planning in teamwork. Capabilities: backlog management, kanban board, time management, Gantt chart, sprint management, event tape, schedule, meeting management. There is a free plan for 5 users and 5 projects.

— Slimane Zouggari