Agile Development Blog

Today we announced Rally’s acquisition of AgileZen, a visual project collaboration tool that manages work using the Lean concept of Kanban. AgileZen is a simple, elegant project collaboration tool that supports software development by providing a Web-based Kanban board.

Our definition of Kanban

If you aren’t yet familiar with Kanban, there are lots of great resources out there. The simplest description we could come up with for Kanban and Scrum is in our press release, but we welcome your thoughts and additions:

Kanban literally means “sign board,” and in Lean it is the signaling tool for visualizing and tracking work as it flows through various stages of a process. A Kanban board does this by exposing bottlenecks, queues and waste in a process so that teams can deliver high quality, high value work. Both Scrum and Kanban methods focus on early value delivery, and both provide transparency into the work in progress.  But Kanban can operate with a different planning and delivery cadence than Scrum and emphasizes different metrics.

What does this mean for Rally and the industry?

We believe that Kanban is a simple but natural extension of Agile software development. It will invite more teams into Agile and provide more runway for mature teams. But most importantly, it will help us extend Agile beyond development teams to create an Agile business. The AgileZen team has been effective in all of these areas. We are in heavy learning mode and, at least in our view, the entire industry is still figuring out how Scrum and Kanban work together and which methodology is better fit for various projects.

Welcome Nate and Niki Kohari!

Nate and Niki Kohari, co-founders of AgileZen, have built the best Web-based Kanban board out there, and we have the utmost respect for their product, company and brand. We are incredibly excited for them to join our North Carolina office.

What does this mean for AgileZen?

First, you should read Niki’s blog post. Not much has changed for AgileZen users. Together, we’ll continue to support the AgileZen solution as a low-cost Kanban-focused project collaboration tool, and users can access support as they always have.  If you aren’t familiar with the AgileZen product yet,  check out their free product.

Join us at the Lean SSC Conference in Atlanta next week!

The Rally and AgileZen teams will present our products and coaching services at the Lean Software & Systems Conference 2010 in Atlanta April 21-23. Ryan is also speaking on Plan-Do-Check-Act. We look forward to seeing you there!

About the Authors: Ryan Martens is a goat cheese maker,  founding board member of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado, and Founder and CTO at Rally Software Development. Jean Tabaka is a wine enthusiast, author and Agile Fellow at Rally Software Development. Subscribe today to get free updates by email or RSS.