For anyone wondering what a 'Kanban' board is or wanting to know how it can be used - I suggest viewing this cool slideshow: http://www.slideshare.net/marcusof

For anyone wondering what a 'Kanban' board is or wanting to know how it can be used - I suggest viewing this cool slideshow: http://www.slideshare.net/marcusoftnet/kanbanboards http://www.slideshare.net/marcusoftnet/kanbanboards Really opens the mind on how to use one. I showed this to our development team today and one of them said 'Surely you could just make this into a computer program?'. The reason I think this doesn't work as well as a computer program (and take this as feedback to your project), is as following: - Having a physical board on a wall is visible to the team, all of the time. A computer system has to be checked, it has to be opened or at least brought to the front of your windows to think 'What am I supposed to be doing? What is there to be done'. Having a real physical board in your office allows you to easily get distracted and get back on track. - The other advantage of this, is that it is seen by everyone in every department. I've worked in places where support teams use one internal system and development use another and despite being linked are often only viewed internally in department. Although this works fine, by having a physical Kanban board on your wall, it is visible by everyone in your company all the time! Everyone will know what people in their department and outside will be up to ... this helps manage work load for people and stops people having to constantly ask 'what's happening with A or B?'. It also stops people ignoring difficult tasks, or urgent bugs - as everyone knows it's there and needs to be done asap. - Having a real board that you stick post it notes on is quite a fun task to do. Especially looking at the added fun from the slides (e.g. little character people and cartoons). - Having a real hand drawn board is flexible, you can change the way you use it depending on how your company is run / departments are set up. However, There are many disadvantages of having a hand drawn one which a computerised one would improve. The key and biggest off the top of my mind is integrating with existing source control / project management solutions. e.g. TFS has a work item number. If you have a hand drawn board with a post it note with the TFS number in the corner, you'd still have to look up what that item is in TFS. Where as in a computerised system you can easily access that information perhaps from clicking the work item. However, all this said, I still think you've made a good start and have a nice product. Your best bet would be to approach different real development teams early and see how they would use it and what pain / gains can be made. - Visibility and fun are key deal breakers here. If something is a chore, boring or painful - then people won't want to do it. Make it fun and they'll happily do it and it adds motivation to the team moral!