Yes, this is the real board that we used to develop Kanban Zone.
Yes, we use Kanban Zone to develop Kanban Zone. And we swear by it.
We think it’s only fair to share this Software Development board template that has helped our team be more effective and efficient while developing Kanban Zone. Just like all our templates, based on your plan, you can use this template immediately for your team.
Not familiar with Kanban? Learn more about what Kanban is here.
Why Use Kanban for Software Development?
Kanban is a tried-and-tested method for all kinds of industries and disciplines, such as construction, manufacturing, and banking. Later, Agile methodologies adopted Kanban as one of its project management methods. Kanban was even found to be the better option compared to Scrum, when it comes to managing project schedules.
Here are the benefits of using Kanban for software development, according to this study:
- Work visibility. Since Kanban is a visualization tool, it can help the development team to see which developer is working on which task. No more wondering about the progress of each task, because the tasks are laid out in columns that represent the phases. Any questions about the overall progress of the project can be answered by looking at the board.
- Control of project activities and tasks. The work-in-progress (WIP) limit forces the team to work on a single (or more, but manageable) unit of task at a time. This increases the focus of each team member, making sure that they’re not working on too many parallel tasks.
- Flow of work. Related to work visibility, a Kanban board provides greater visibility of interacting components in a team. To make its value stream as efficient as possible, the team needs to be able to identify bottlenecks and optimize the whole flow, not just locally.
What’s included in the Software Development Template?
- Seven columns for each part of the process: Read Me, Refine, Prioritize, Plan, Develop, Test & Release, and Verify.
- Explicit agreements in each column, explaining what you should do step-by-step.
- Four labels to categorize the work: Enhancement, Bug, Research, and Documentation.
How to Use This Template
For this template, we have written a very detailed blog that provides a full explanation of every column on this board with many more screenshots. If you are thinking about using this template, or just seeing what a mature Kanban team uses as their board, then please do read more about it under this article called “How our team uses Kanban to develop software“.
