Kanban Introduced to TFS

There are a number of Agile methodologies when it comes to software development. Some may argue that there are too many flavors but I’ll leave that discussion for another day. Today however is all about Kanban and how it is now a part of the Team Foundation Service and according to Brian Harry soon to be incorporated into Team Foundation Server: “ …our plan is to include the Kanban support in our first TFS 2012 on premises update later this fall. ”

Having used MSF for Agile, Scrum and yes, even Waterfall for more projects than I care to remember I was definitely intrigued by this new methodology and what it offers verses the aforementioned versions. Although Kanban is/was closely associated with the manufacturing industry, its core principles are a natural fit for software development.  

The TFService team does a wonderful job of introducing this functionality via their blog post as well as this video with Brian Keller and Gregg Boer demonstrating the new Kanban board.

Of course Kanban might not be the correct fit for every project and who better to tell you this than David J. Anderson, the master of the Kanban method. In this video he discusses when it is and is not applicable.

Regardless of which Agile implementation is chosen, it’s great to see TFS embrace new types of models and continue to add tremendous value to the ALM community.