Easy Agile Programs with Kanban teams

[Steve Holota]

We are currently running a 30 day trial of Easy Agile Programs, Easy Agile Roadmap and Structure to centralize manage product roadmap, dependencies and release readiness.

While the majority of our delivery teams use scrum there are a considerable number of teams using Kanban. It appears that Easy Agile Programs will only pick up issues if they are in a sprint.

Has anyone found how to pull in issues from kanban boards to visualize dependencies in an increment?

[Nick Muldoon]

Hi @lmaxwell and @Steve Holota 

Easy Agile Programs supports adding both Kanban and Scrum boards to a Program. While this doesn’t automatically pull in scheduled issues from existing Sprints, it does allow Release Train engineers and other users to schedule issues in an Increment.

Additionally, as of Easy Agile Programs 3.1.0, Increments can be configured to use a unified sequence of Sprints sourced from one Scrum board: this way, issues from any board (including Kanban boards) can be scheduled in a native Jira Sprint using Programs.

What issues are you having with including Kanban boards in your increment planning that Easy Agile Programs could help with? Feel free to email support@easyagile.com if you want to share any company specific information.

Regards,
Nick Muldoon, Easy Agile

[lmaxwell]

Hi @Nick Muldoon 

Thanks for the response. When we configured our current PI in EA, it did not seem that we could have both Scrum and Kanban boards existing in the same Program Increment, because Kanban does not have a way to map to sprints. But if I'm understanding correctly, we can include those Kanban boards in EA, and new issues can be added to the Kanban board during planning - is this correct?

What about existing issues in a Kanban backlog? How do we include those on the EA views? 

RE: Additionally, as of Easy Agile Programs 3.1.0, Increments can be configured to use a unified sequence of Sprints sourced from one Scrum board: this way, issues from any board (including Kanban boards) can be scheduled in a native Jira Sprint using Programs.

Can you point me to documentation on the above, to understand how this works? And how can I tell which version we have currently?

I do have a number of specific questions regarding using EA with Kanban, and will reach out directly to Support. Thanks again for your help!

-Lisa

[Nick Muldoon]

Hi Lisa,

I'll respond here first then follow up with the support request, thanks for the additional detail there. From your support request I can see you are on version 3.0.2 so it may be useful to upgrade to the latest version.

Yes, it is possible to have Kanban and/or Scrum boards in a Program. For Kanban boards the issues are mapped to what are essentially virtual sprints - we don't create sprints on the Kanban board as Jira Software doesn't support that, yet we do keep track of the time/week that an issue is in to align with the Scrum teams in the Program.

Existing issues can be seen in the Backlog, and you can open that up using the blue 'Backlog' button in the top right.

You can find a 30 minute product walkthrough / on-demand webinar here: https://app.livestorm.co/easy-agile/easy-agile-programs-demo

I'll follow up on the support request now.

Thanks Lisa,
Nick

[lmaxwell]

Hi Nick,

Thanks for this info - that is great news for our Scrumban and Kanban teams!

I'm surprised however, that we aren't using the most recent version since we just purchased Easy Agile a few months ago. We must have just missed a major update. We will look to upgrade to the latest and greatest version. 

-Lisa

[lmaxwell]

Hi Steve,

We are new users of Easy Agile Programs. We have one Scrumban team in our Scaled Agile train and the Kanban boards would not work for us along with the Scrum boards. We ended up creating a Scrum board for that team, just for the purposes of Planning and visualizing dependencies. 

Hope this helps!

-Lisa

[Nicholas Ellis _ALM Works_]

Hi Steve,

If you are looking to put both of these boards into a single structure for an increment that can be done relatively easily.  I'll assume that we are starting with an empty structure here.

1. Add folders for the Kanban and Scrum boards. https://wiki.almworks.com/display/structure/Folders

2. Under each folder create an insert automation to insert the Kanban/Scrum board. https://wiki.almworks.com/display/structure/Agile+Board+Inserter

Now you have all the issues from both types of boards in a single structure.

I hope that helps.

(Thank you for using Structure).

Nick Ellis

[ALM Works]

[Steve Holota]

Thank you for the reply Nicholas,

My specific challenge is only with the Programs add-on. Sorry for the confusion. I suppose I added detail on the other add-ons which lead to a misunderstanding