Saturday, November 09, 2013

Kanban: Show stale issues to reach Kaizen Moments. Show issues which status have not changed for some time with JIRA Agile

Agile Software Development needs to be done as simple as possible. Lean thinking is about that, it is about making sure the SDLC gets to a stage where it cannot be simpler. This is what the philosophy about continuous improvement is about.

High quality production starts with great culture supported by lean processes in place.

Bottlenecks have to be identified and if the culture is right then team will speak out issues in the daily meeting. However using a tool to remind those who forget about the issues they are having would be great and that is exactly what JIRA allows. You can mark issues that have been stale for 2 days for example using the below JQL for "Card Color"
NOT (Status changed AFTER -2d)
Of course identifying the bottleneck is a great part of the equation but resolving it is the most important part of it. Project Managers, Coachers, Coordinators etc should not be spending time chasing what people are doing or where they are stuck. They should be spending time removing roadblocks and eliminating bottlenecks. A tool can be helpful at identifying but intelligence (only found in human brains at the time of this writing) is needed to resolve the challenges we face.

Be happy when you find out issues, be worry when you find none. If you hear from the team they have no issues but you see there are stale items in the board then clearly you have reached a Kaizen moment. Without bottlenecks there will be no process improvement.

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