Use kanban
Commit to continuous delivery and ship new functionality fast
Establish a pull system
Revitalize your backlog management. Capture roadmap-driven and technical work in a single view. Define requirements and estimate effort in story points or time. Then, set the class of service and rank your backlog in priority order. This clarifies what teams should work on next.
Visualize your workflow
Map out your process on a kanban board. Add as many columns as you need to represent active workflow statuses and queue states. Use horizontal swimlanes to group work by class of service, team member, or type. Customize your kanban cards to visually highlight important details.
Focus on flow
Set work-in-progress (WIP) limits to establish the team's capacity. Pull new items onto the board from the prioritized backlog and track updates in real time. Instantly spot any bottlenecks or blockers and monitor time in status to keep work moving forward. This keeps the team focused on rapidly delivering valuable new features to customers.
Optimize performance
Help the team be its best. Analyze work completed each week with the throughput report. And use cycle and lead time metrics to see exactly how long it takes to reach the finish line. Monitor your cumulative flow over time to improve consistency — so you can set delivery dates with confidence.
Make ongoing improvements
Document your workflow policies. Establishing clear guidelines helps everyone on the team understand what is expected and follow the same approach. Regularly conduct retrospectives and review process metrics to identify areas for improvement. Make small, iterative changes to drive even greater efficiency.
Top capabilities for using kanban
Prioritize the backlog | View planned product and technical work side by side to establish a single prioritized backlog | |
Customize your board | Tailor your kanban board using different views, filters, and swimlanes to highlight progress | |
Manage progress | Set WIP limits to deliver work at a steady pace and identify bottlenecks in your process | |
View kanban metrics | Use powerful reports to track throughput, analyze cycle time, and monitor cumulative flow | |
Document everything | Create a team knowledge base in the same tool you use to manage the actual work | |
Ready to get started?
Use Aha! Develop with Aha! Roadmaps to connect technical work to strategy. Start a free trial or let our product experts — who are all former product managers — show you the possibilities.
