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Various 
My previous post was a bit about Kanban. I kept on
googling about Kanban and found some great articles which talk about combining
Kanban with Scrum which had some nice techniques explained below.
An interesting technique is limiting the
Work-In-Progress (WIP) for individuals. This can be done by adding a rule which
states: “You can only work on more than one item, if you are blocked by the
current one.” By limiting the WIP it will make roadblocks far more visible to
the team. For example when several workitems are blocked by roadblocks which
appear to be of the similar cause this could indicate an impediment on the
sprint which can be researched by the Scrum Master. See this
link for more information. Another advantage of assigning a WIP limit is
making sure tasks can be done effectivily without too much overhead of
switching between the other tasks the individual has currently in progress.
Late binding is another concept they discuss although
we are currently using this already on our Scrum process (but without knowing
it). This discusses the ability to create tasks which every team member can
pick up. When tasks are only capable of being picked up by certain people you
will need to why behind this. This immediately creates a dependence on certain
project members which isn’t what you want. Keep everyone expandable. See this
link for more information about this in the form of the project antipattern
Truck Factor.
Overall the article also discusses implementing
Pull-based techniques in the planning board. For example introducing a “Ready”
column which needs to have and can only have two items in it. Tasks in this
column can be put in progress. One tasks in the “todo” lane can only be put on
the “Ready” column if the ready column contains one or less items. When this
transition is made the tasks in the “todo” lane are prioritized and the highest
priority are put in the “Ready” column. This principle makes sure we only
prioritize when it is really needed by the next chains in the process.
By expanding this Pull-mechanism this article also
introduces a “Specify” lane. This lane also has a WIP limit based on the work
which needs to be available in the next chain in the production of software.
Read the article for more details about this. It will introduce handoff
buffers.
http://leansoftwareengineering.com/ksse/scrum-ban/