Manage Your Project Work Flow With Kanban Board At Visual Studio Online

Follow the below steps to manage your project work flow with Kanban Board at Visual Studio Online,

Step 1: Open your Visual Studio Online project and from the Backlog items view, click the Board link to show up the Kanban board for your project.



Step 2: Now, move some items across the board to change their state.

Note: When, an item is moved from one column to another, its state is set to the one in the name of the column, to reflect the progress being made during the project.



Step 3: Open any item by clicking on it and set the Assigned value to Effort fields. When you close the item, these values will show up in the board.

Note: You can have all the information about the size of the items and who is working on what, at a glance.

Step 4: Click the Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD) on the top right to expand it.

Note: The diagram shows the evolution of the backlog during the last 30 weeks. It is a great tool for gathering a lot of useful information: evolution of the lead time and cycle time, backlog size, bottlenecks, arrival of the unplanned work, etc.


Step 5: Now, close the CFD. Click customize columns.

Note: The Kanban board can be customized to fit the way projects are run in your organization.


Step 6: Change the WIP limit of any of the columns to make it smaller than the number of items contained in it. Click OK. The header of the column will change to reflect that we have more work in that state than the maximum allotted.

Note: Establishing WIP limits per column and tweaking them over time is a great way to improve our process. They help us to focus on a small set of work without leaving a lot of undone items to detect and remove the bottlenecks.



Step 7: Open the customization pane again. Add a new column by clicking on one of the ‘+’ icons.

Note: You can change the name of the existing columns, remove them or add new ones. You can also prioritize the items as they appear on the board. In this way, you can mirror the steps you took to implement any backlog item or feature, from its discovery to its delivery.



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