How to track progress while using Kanban?

Question

We are thinking about moving from Scrum to a more developed Kanban style of development, but one thing that is not clear to me is how to control progress in Kanban.

I read that progress can be measured by controlling the cycle time of each story, and then presumably applying this time to the number of outstanding stories. But it seems to me that this depends on the size and complexity of the stories, which can be different.

I also saw the burning schedules to be used, so will there be a chart for the entire release? Since the lag is not fixed (unlike during the sprint), you just allow it to burn up / down, since the waiting lag changes PO? I think that as you approach the release, the lag should be less volatile, which will allow you to burn to completion.

After further reflection, I think my problem is that our managers are like the “illusion” of control that the burnout diagram brings. They tend to see it (erroneously, in my opinion) as a schedule, and therefore they can judge how the project is “on schedule” or “behind the schedule” or something else. I can’t understand how this is happening in Kanban. Maybe that’s good.

Answer 1

For the entire project, the best way to track progress is to have a cumulative flow chart. Learn more about CFDs from this presentation . You can also learn from CFDs about things like bottlenecks, etc.

For specific tasks, it really depends on your approach. If you have small functions (for example, 1-2 days of development) on the Kanban board, you can see the status directly on the board, as functions quickly move through the workflow.

If you use larger functions, you can divide them into smaller tasks. This is mainly how we work with our functions: for larger functions (for example, 5-10 days), we divide them into development tasks (we do not set the development task on the board). Then I can say that task A has 3 out of 4 development tasks, so we succeed. In addition, we evaluate the duration of development tasks so that I can distinguish between tasks lasting from 1 hour to 8 hours. For small functions, we have only one development task that develops this function.