I'm thinking about building a TFS Process Template for Kanban. I just wanted to gauge the interest....
A:
Actually we use Kanaban and TFS and my opinion is that TFS is more of an obstacle here than help. We basically reduced TFS role to bug tracking tool and code repo.
One of strengths of Kanban board is its visual design which is very intuitive. It can't really be substituted with a set of forms organized in the flow.
What more, teams tend to use "hardware" white/cork board with sticky notes whenever they can, namely whenever they are co-located. And even if they aren't they usually try to find a software tool which is as simple as possible. You can say a lot about TFS but not that it is a simple tool.
Personally I think that's not a very good idea. I wouldn't use it.
pawelbrodzinski
2010-08-24 09:41:30
@pawelbrodzinski thanks for the feedback. Have you tried the Work Item Manager from Telerik? It's a pretty nice (and free) way of visualizing your digital cork board for kanban. I've used TFS 2010 since Beta1 and don't find it all that complicated given all that it can do. If I were on a small team I might agree with you that a corkboard would be a good way to go but it provides zero visibility to anyone outside of my team....
devlife
2010-08-24 13:56:36
I would tend to agree with you Devlife. Physical boards are really nice, but I to use WIM from Telerik. I also find the Urban Turtle board great. If you could put together a web based, ajaxy WIM equivalent, I think many would jump at it.
Ryan Cromwell
2010-08-25 01:24:59
I haven't used Telerik's WIM. I played with Kanbanery (kanbanery.com) for some time and if I decided to go with a software I'd probably tend to choose something like that.Of course I agree that the need of software board appears when the team is distributed.
pawelbrodzinski
2010-08-25 06:58:19
+1
A:
Kanban is not a software development life cycle methodology but a process change methodology as I have written in my post:
There should never be a Kanban process template for Team Foundation Server(TFS)
There is a great need for tooling for TFS that would make the use of Kanban better on TFS.
I'm working on one Kanban tool for TFS that will try to visualize the flow of work. Please take a look at the early version at codeplex: Visual WIP
Hakan Forss
2010-10-11 07:11:07