Kanban Board in MS Teams

How to build Kanban Board in MS Teams?

How to visualize work in MS Teams?

Did remote work prevent you from using your pampered team Kanban Board? Or maybe long absence in the office made you notice value from work visualization, but you don’t know how to start?

If yes, this article will help you how to quickly start using basic Kanban techniques with widely available tool – Microsoft Teams.

Below method we have worked out and currently using in Elekta in Business Process Automation Team. Board contains apart of pure Kanban elements also some elements which are in line with Scrum guide.

There is always a chance to improve something. That’s why I think we will improve our Team Board (as well as I will extend next version of this article) for Lean elements related to capturing and solving our process problems (contrary to monitoring only Project problems as described below)

If you have questions better ideas how to use MS Teams for Kanban Board please contact me on LinkedIn – It’s always good to talk.

Why visualize work using Kanban Board?

For me the key thing is to be transparent in areas of: - On what currently Team is working? - Who is responsible for particular project? - Who should make next step in particular project? - What exactly needs to be done? - For when something has to be done?

Simple visualization makes it relatively easy to control the “Chaos” who likes to creep in if the team is working on many things at the same time (and do you know any team which is not working that way?). Full and available to everyone information makes it easier to manage tasks.

Review of deadlines and responsibilities make it possible in the blink of eye to establish if we have delays, if yes, on which project and with whom we should discuss the actions.

Regularly used table makes it quick to establish who should do what in particular day, and if, and what kind of support he / she may need.

If you would like to read more about the Kanban, I can recommend Jerzy Stawicki and Rafał Zalewski course which I described here:

https://pawelzygar.com/article/kurskanban/

Kanban in MS Teams

Sounds perfect – but how to do this without spending half a day for “administration” and especially remotely?

I think that some of you may have also additional requirement – Please do not ask me for purchase and maintenance of another software!

Yes, it’s possible to meet all above requirements – is MS Teams. Tool is available in pretty much every company using Windows 10, and in most cases is already configured for all users what allows for group chat and group SharePoint. Couple of upgrades back it was called MS Planner (and until today to export tables to from MS Teams to MS Excel you have to do it via Planner app!).

Kanban / Daily Meeting – basic assumptions

It’s not true that Agile do not require discipline. Also it’s not true that “new tool” magically happen that your work start flow smoother. It’s the way of using tools and discipline making flow smoother.

To use team Board in sensible way you should follow the rules below:

• Whole Team is always participating in the meeting
• Daily Stand Up / Daily Meeting (or Huddle if your are on Lean side of Force) is always held on same time and place - or rather link nowadays
• Meeting duration should be max 15min – detailed conversation on status, problems and plans should happen directly after Daily Meeting but in form of 1 to 1 between engaged team members.

As remote work is significantly reducing “small talk” in a Team and rarely there is occasion that whole Team is on one call, as a Team we have agreed that it’s ok to extend meeting do 30min. After several month of practicing this I will stay with my first opinion it’s ineffective… but as all of us are humans it’s hard to hide that it brings benefits to Team in “soft” areas.

To make possible to keep 15min timebox it’s worth to prepare few bullet points agenda for the meeting. It will significantly speed up the meeting as everyone will know what, when and how widely to comment. In agenda preparation you can use “questions” from Scrum / Kanban methodology but it’s best if team can re-forge it its own context.

My agenda looks as below: - Are there any urgent events which Team / Leader should action immediately? - If not, I am starting with short team / company level admin announcements. - Then we are going through Board and updating the statuses in same moment (if there is no problem or deadline approaching there is no need to update every project everyday) - Finally we are confirming priorities for today for all Team members

The last point is the most important – the Key in Kanban is to reduce WiP and quickly finalize particular elements of project. Updated board is not a goal of the meeting. It’s the way to reach the goal.

ProTip: If you are using real time effort valuation or other elements of Scrum Product Backlog Refinement it’s worth to agree that single, particular action is made on agreed day in a week.

In 99% of cases there is no sense to repeat these actions every day. And repeating them everyday there is no chance to meet the Daily Meeting timebox.

How to setup Kanban Board in MS Teams?

Below you can see screen with part of the Kanban Board and my proposition how to use MS Teams possibilities to track all information I have described above.

Process Phase Buckets – it’s simply columns of our Kanban Board. As it is related to your own process context , thus for each team columns will be different. I will not extend this topic in this thread. Those of you who already know Kanban will quickly notice that Work in Progress limits are missing! Yes, there is no limits on particular column. Instead of that we are using COWiP, which means limits of task which every team member can do in “next 4 weeks”. It’s not typical 4 weeks sprint – the advantage of Kanban and weekly effort valuation is possibility to plan and pull new tasks / projects on Board as quickly as we deliver part of work and “limit to fill” appears on board.

Who Owns Next Steps – means who in particular task / project has to do next step. It could be Project Owner but he can wait for Business Analyst, Developer, Tester and very frequently for key information from Business! Visualization in whose park the ball is in is crucial here.

Next Step in Project – as we already know for who we are waiting for it would be good to know to exactly know for WHAT we are waiting for. It could happen that task should be handled to another person or Leader action is required. In my opinion it’s worth to type in 1-3 steps which need to happen to move project forward. Frequently it pushes you for looking for information for next steps when you are “waiting” on current one. On the other hand, “next 3 steps” are in my opinion enough. In Agile project management it’s rarely possible to confidently and with details predict what should be done well ahead in project.

Due Date for Next Step / Delay = Daily Meeting Focus Point – this element replaces famous Kanban banana skin and simply means a “red card” on our Daily Board in MS Teams. It brings attention to the problem and make it possible to discuss and action it on Daily Meeting.

Work Time Estimation – or effort valuation, it’s an estimation how much (or how long in Working Days) we will work on particular task. Per definition this estimation should decrease with advancement of work. On above Board we have T-Shirt scale – SML (with option to extend to XS and XL). For each size we have associated range of Working Days needed to finish the task. In correlation with COWiP and managing all the task / Projects via Product Backlog we can track progress of work in real time and plan next projects.

Team Project Owner – means person from the Team responsible End to End for Project. In our case we deal with bunch of rather small automation projects in same time. In most other contexts I would expect it will be related to person responsible for particular task in Project. The main benefit here is of course transparency of information who has the biggest knowledge on particular Project and who is RESPONISBLE for completing the task!

Is above Kanban Board complete?

Of course not! There is no information related to KPI, metrics, findings & actions from Retrospective and other information related to organization of Team and process. MS Teams are able to compensate for missing physical Agile Wall but it will be covered in second part of article.