Agile Project Management with Kanban by Eric Brechner

Agile Project Management with Kanban Reviews

• 
  Rod Hilton

  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

  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

  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

  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/...
• 
  Ben

  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

  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.
• 
  Ahmad Bamieh

  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

  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.
• 
  Bill

  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

  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.
• 
  Cathie

  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

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

  OK for a book of this kind.
• 
  Erika RS

  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

  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

  To the point. Lots of examples and "hands on experience".
• 
  Dave M. Puhrmann

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

  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

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