Beginner's Guide to Kanban for IT Project Managers

Every IT Project Manager must know Kanban. But Kanban is simple only on the surface. There are lots of critical concepts under the hood. Moreover, you need to implement Kanban in a software app like Jira, Trello, or Azure DevOps. Therefore, you need to know why and how to set up a kanban board correctly.
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00:00 | Intro
00:40 | The board
02:16 | Done stage
02:39 | Practical way to develop a perfect kanban board
03:38 | Work in progress limits
05:15 | How Kanban and WIPs work on practice
08:34 | Cumulative Flow Diagram and Control Chart
09:46 | Practical tips and challenges
Dmitriy Nizhebetskiy is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

[@ITProjectManagers]

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[@itsmechicpalak]

Yes. Please make a detailed video on CI/CD with the perspective of a project manager.

[@ITProjectManagers]

Thanks for feedback! Will do:)

[@pmwithyom]

Great video for helping people understand the basics of kanban

[@ITProjectManagers]

Thanks for your feedback, Yomi! Much appreciated.

[@michaelw1456]

This is excellent. Thank you.

[@ITProjectManagers]

You're very welcome!

[@alexanderfernandez9469]

Hello Dmytro, thanks for the cristal clear explanation about Kanban. I would be interested in CI/CD videos. And of course, more Jira related topics. It would be great to have a full playlist. E.g.: going from beginers to advanced.

[@ITProjectManagers]

Hi Alexander, Thanks for writing. Noted! I have plans for Jira video for beginners. CI/CD is also in pipeline.

[@saschad.6209]

Congratulations! This is a brilliant video ! You gain a follower and a strong supporter! Big THANK YOU! KR Sascha

[@ITProjectManagers]

Thank you very much. Sascha!

[@cjyoung8179]

Thank you for the 101 Kanban knowledge 1. What if QA fail, do we ask developer to fix until it is ready to deploy? But how will you prioritize the ongoing task and Fail QA task on Kanban. 2. Interested in CI/CD 🙏

[@ITProjectManagers]

You are welcome. Good questions. 1. If QA fails while a task is still on the board, then you need to make developers fix all critical defects. Again, it's a matter of DoD to specify what defects are acceptable. If you find a defect in production later, create a new ticket and prioritise it accordingly. 2. Treat defect and tasks equally. Then, priorities them as you see fit. In some cases, you can override all current work and expedite one ticket. For example if it's a super critical defect on prod.

[@SahilShah-nf9tn]

Great explanation!

[@ITProjectManagers]

Glad it was helpful! Thanks for feedback. It means a lot to me.

[@dm5791]

Can you do a JIRA tutorial?

[@ITProjectManagers]

I have a video on Jira. But it’s a bit advanced version: Is Jira Ready for IT Projects in 2023? | How to Use Jira kzbin.info/www/bejne/gZu4col8p9aCjNU But i plan to create a beginner’s guide somewhere soon.

[@pandastory-abookseriesabou8568]

🖖🏻 Agreed ​💥

[@ITProjectManagers]

Nice! Thank for the feedback.

[@LovelyAndyy]

Hey there Dmytro, I'm a bit late to seeing this video, but as a Junior Dev being pushed into his first PM role, this video is very helpful. My only real question is how do you make all tasks "Approximately the same size"? If I have a big feature like, a analytics dashboard, how can I make tasks the same size? I could break that big feature up into UI task, database connection tasks, etc. But in a small company I wouldn't want multiple developers working on smaller parts of the same feature, I think that brings in too much confusion and requires way too much coordination. I would've just assumed that you assign that one ticket either yourself as the PM OR through triaging with your dev team. Sorry if that question is a big abstract, but I don't really understand how you can truly break somethings up, yet keep them roughly the same size as ever thing else without confusing everyone involved or breaking the kanban 'flow'. Cheers on the video, I learned a lot!

[@ITProjectManagers]

Hey, Andy, That's a good question. First of all, let's define what a big task means. As a rule of thumb, I try to keep an individual assignment no bigger than 3 days. If it's more than three days, it's better to break it into smaller tasks. There's a lot of theory why you don't want to have tasks longer than that. Now, if we talk about Kanban, approximately the same size can mean a task of 1-5 days long. If you are within these limits, you should be ok. So, do you have tasks bigger than that?

[@LovelyAndyy]

@@ITProjectManagers Thank you for the reply! The thing is that I might not really know how big the task is or how long it would take; with a small team and my level of experience it's hard to guage how long things will take. As an example though, we have a whole new feature for our app. We want to be able to hold events that any user can join. You need to allow people to create events, others to apply and then the creator of the event to choose who they wish to come to the event (think a talent show or something). There are loads of moving parts to this and what makes it harder, is that it's built on top of the already functioning app, so moving things along a normal PR/QA/release scheudle on a Kanban can be quite tricky to imagine. What I came up with was to split into two Kanbans. You have a main kanban that handles all of the day to day tasks, but then also have the Kanban for the new feature/project. That new feature/project has smaller task tickets (build the UI, create the foms, results selection pages, etc.), but also has a single ticket for the entire feature on the Main kanban. I know this is all case by case, but was just curious how proper PM's normally work through these sorts of projects happening at different times, but working in the same environment. Thanks again for the response and sorry for my long reply hahah

[@MrJestovarghese]

Hello, where can I find the Gcalc board you mentioned in the video?

[@ITProjectManagers]

It's on my account. I didn't share it...

[@lifeiscool2957]

what are the rules to set wip?😊

[@ITProjectManagers]

There are no standards here. You need to find the most efficient setup for you team through trial and error. Start with main In Progress column and set WIP to the number of contributors. Then decide in what columns you DON’T want tasks to accumulate and lower WIP for it.

[@lifeiscool2957]

@@ITProjectManagers appreciated that. Thank yoy