Are Kanban Workflows Agile?
Karl Scotland started a discussion examining whether the workflows or stages in a kanban system are counter to the agile ideals of cross-functional and collaborative teams. He started by noting that the stages on a kanban board can look a lot like the phases of waterfall. The ensuing discussion clarified that stages are not necessarily hand-offs, and led to other insights as well. Karl started with an examination of a kanban system that looked very similar to a waterfall process: Analysis -> Build -> Test -> Release Next he looked at a typical Scrum taskboard, which looks like this: To Do -> In Progress -> Done Karl then looked for ways to have this taskboard reveal more information about how work is flowing through the system. In many environments, features (stories) that have been marked ‘done’ are not immediately released, or put into the production environment. In these situations, in can be illuminating to mark the distinction between ‘ready for production’ and ‘in production’ on
