Kanban Board

The Kanban Board app provides teams with the option of managing pull-based, lean software development projects with other iterative and time-boxed projects. The Kanban Board allows the user to trigger an update to the Schedule State field for any drag-and-drop action from one column to another column. Using the Schedule State field enables a shared view of work in Rally regardless of the methodology that each team practices because many pages in Rally such as Release Status show status and roll-ups based on the Schedule State field.

Product backlog, time-boxed iterations, and estimation are unnecessary when using a Kanban system since work is pulled into the board and the queue is the only work of interest. Achieving maximum throughput is the main goal by determining bottlenecks in the system and limiting the work in progress to reduce task context switching and ensure work is completed efficiently and quickly.

Topics include:

• Set up the Kanban Board
• Use the Kanban Board
• App Tools menu options
• Column actions
• Card actions
• View associated item status
• Filter by Tag
• Exit policies
• Coaching Corner: Why are exit policies important?

Set up the Kanban Board

The Kanban Board's columns are determined based on a Rally field. You can use Schedule State if you like, but most Kanban teams will want to use a custom field to define customized columns. You can use different values for different projects (teams).

1. As a workspace administrator, create these custom fields on the story and/or defect work items:
   1. Create a custom field of type Dropdown in Rally with a Name and Display Name of your choosing (such as KanbanState). Spaces are allowed in the Name and Display Name but special characters are not supported. Add values to the custom dropdown for each Kanban state. For example, Prioritized, Ready, In Dev, Released, and so on.
   2. Create a custom field of type Boolean in Rally with a Name and Display Name of Ready. This field is used to determine when a card is ready to be pulled into the next column.
2. Once you have installed the Kanban Board from the App Catalog, it will automatically show the Settings dialog the first time you load the app. Some of the settings will affect what information is rendered on the card.

Use the Kanban Board

Assign defects and stories to the first Kanban state visible on your board. Set up a custom view with the Kanban State custom field displayed from the Plan > Backlog page. You can then double-click on the Kanban State custom field for each story or defect to set the Kanban state.

Another option to assign work to the first Kanban state by displaying the "-- No Entry --" column on the board. The board will limit the work in this column to the first 100 cards.

App Tools actions

Column actions

Card actions

Viewing associated item status

If you have defects and/or tasks attached to cards on the Kanban Board, you may view the overall status directly on each card.

Task and defect status may be enabled in the settings menu:

When enabled, colored icons will appear on any cards that have associated work items. See the tables below for the meaning of each icon.

Task status icons

Icon	Status
	Tasks associated to the work item, all have a state of Defined
	Tasks associated to the work item, at least one has a state other than Completed, at least one is blocked
	Tasks associated to the work item, at least one has a state other than Completed, none are blocked
	Tasks associated to the work item, all have a state of Completed

Defect status icons

Icon	Status
	Defects associated to the user story, at least one has a state of Closed
	Defects associated to the user story, none have a state of Closed
	Defects associated to the user story, all have a state of Closed

Filter by Tag

The Filter by drop-down allows you to filter what cards are shown, by fading out cards that do not have the selected Tag applied. If no cards match the selected Tag, all cards are faded and a message is displayed. When the filter is applied to the board, you can still interact (drag-and-drop, click links, expand cards, etc.) with all cards displayed on the board.

Exit policies

To document what criteria needs to be met before a card can move into the next column, use the exit policies feature.

By default, the Exit Policy fields are hidden from the Kanban Board. To display the fields above each column, select the Policies check box next to the Filter by drop-down selector.

When the fields are displayed, hover your mouse over the column you want to edit, and the icon appears. Click your mouse to open the editor. Enter your exit criteria, and select to save the changes.

Coaching Corner: Why are exit policies important?

The following recommendations for Kanban exit policies were provided by Eric Willeke, who is a Coach at Rally. Our coaching organization specializes in agile and lean methodologies, and helps customers tailor their use of Rally to unique workflows. Please review the following with your teams, to ensure you create effective policies when using this feature.

More great advice like this is available to Rally customers who would like to further enhance their Agile and Lean processes. Now, it's even easier to set up a quick call, with our new services offering. For a minimal fee, you can schedule a one hour advising session on the phone. For more details, click here.

Why do we use exit policies?

There are two major types of value that exit policies provide to teams. However, understanding the value requires understanding the underlying intent. In each column, the policy is the team’s commitment to complete a certain list of activities before allowing work to be pulled into the next column. This list typically takes the form of a set of testable statements, such as “Code review comments resolved” or “Installed in staging environment.” When observing the board, a viewer can look at a single card’s position and interpret it as “I can trust that every policy to the left of this card has been met” and act safely on that information.

As a result, exit policies answer the question “What does it mean for work to be in this state?” to people that interact with the board. These per column policies help convey clear expectations to stakeholders and anybody else viewing a team’s board. This in turn goes a long way to clearing up misunderstandings between the team and their stakeholders, which helps to quickly create a stronger, more trusting relationship. However, gaining this benefit requires a team to adhere to the policies they elect, because even a handful of cases where the policies are ignored will lead to the stakeholders being unable to trust the integrity of the information they obtain from the board.

The second major benefit is to the team using the board. The exit policies serve as a tool to amplify the professional capabilities of the people on the team by providing a small safety net against natural human tendencies to be excited about finishing work. Using policies as a checklist allows an individual to focus on leveraging their skills to achieve the product’s goals, and reduces the stress factor of having to remember each aspect of the team’s commitment. This also has a huge value in helping new people as they join the team and try to learn the new team’s behaviors and norms.