TFS 2015 Agile Development Practices – use of Kanban

Kanban is used extensively in modern application development processes, whether using traditional waterfall development or agile development, and Kanban management is available. Because Kanban has a simple management approach and intuitive display, many software development teams choose to use Kanban for software development management. This article does not dwell too much on kanban management theory, but here's how to use the Kanban capabilities of TFS.
The latest version of TFS provides a powerful electronic kanban board (the latest release of TFS Update 2.1, which also includes a boost to Kanban functionality), and a large number of customizations to the display of Kanbans, plus the ability to add lanes. The development team can customize the kanban of their own team according to their needs!!!

creating a TFS Kanban

TFS provides 3 team project creation templates, Scrum, agile, and CMMI by default. The Kanban feature is available on the Product Backlog page under menu work after the project is created. Previously this feature was named Kanban , but it became a board after TFS 2013.

Here's a quick introduction to why the default Kanban shows 4 columns? What is the column name for each column? First, TFS stores a variety of information in the form of work items, such as requirements, tasks, bugs, and so on. These work items are forms that contain a number of fields, one of which is called State, and if you are a project created using the default Scrum template, the product backlog item (that is, the demand or user story) defaults to 4 states, namely: New (New), Approved (approved), commited (committed), and done (completed). You must have seen that the column name of each column in the Kanban is the default name of the product backlog item, and when we drag the card to switch between the columns, the status of the work item changes, and the default Kanban display may be far from satisfying our needs, so let's take a look at how to use TFS Kanban. The current status of TFS work items can only be modified by modifying the work item template and then using the command line or TFS Power tools to submit to the TFS server.

Introduction to TFS Kanban features

If your office has a 70-inch touchscreen, you can drag away the physical whiteboard you used before. You just have to open the Kanban on the big screen, and choose Full screen mode, and a digital version with the same display effect as the physical board appears!

First of all, change the name of the Kanban board to become a set of terminology used by the team. Click on the column name to quickly modify it!

TFS creates 4 columns on the view by default based on the status of the product backlog item. Teams can create Kanban columns based on their own needs, and below I create new columns that have been selected to show the needs of the current iteration or current version that need to be developed

• WIP (work in Process) limit : The maximum number of product backlog items in the current state. Each kanban column may have a different value, and it represents a different meaning. For example, the backlog of WIP limits to be developed depends on the number of team developers. When a product backlog item that exceeds the limit number is put into the current column means that your team members are developing multiple requirements at the same time, the impact on the team is that there will be less need to test the testers during a fixed period of time, and the tester's efficiency will decrease.
• State Mapping : When you drag a card from a Kanban board to this column, the work item state that the dragged card represents should be modified.
• "In Progress" and "completed" in each column: You can refine the trace in each status column by ticking this item. For example in the development of the list of what is being developed, which is already developed and completed.
• completed definition : Show descriptive information for this column by writing a markdown script

Now let's add some PBI and bugs as experimental data.

Now that the cards show only the values of the displayed fields, we can configure the fields displayed in the cards and display them, regardless of whether they have values. All the fields displayed in the card can be edited.

• core field : The card contains the field by default, and you can control whether the core field is displayed in the card by ticking the box
• additional fields : Up to 10 additional fields can be added to the card, and custom fields can be added to the card
• Show Empty field : Controls whether an empty field is displayed on a card by ticking the box

If you develop a system that includes foreground and background management, and you want to differentiate between different cards, what should I do? TFS provides Swimlane functionality that allows you to group cards in a kanban.

The advantage of Kanban is that it allows team members to see the overall situation of the team at a glance. The default setting shows a weak display for each member's working status and work progress. In TFS, you can enhance the display by configuring how the display style works. For example, the background color of the card, font style, and can be conditional to match the card display rules.


In the black background is no evaluation of the workload, the white background is not assigned, each member claimed by the PBI are different colors, so we can visually see the team's current iteration of the development status and the working status of each member.

In addition to the card background color can be customized, work item label color can also be customized.

This article describes the TFS Kanban feature, and the next article will give you a detailed explanation of how to use TFS Kanban to complete a scrum iteration.

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TFS 2015 Agile Development Practices – use of Kanban