Kanban was developed for factory floors and operates best with tasks that don’t require additional discussion, are well defined, exist in discrete stages, and proceed in a continuous flow.
Bugs, and very small feature requests fit this model well, which is why Kanban is a popular methodology today with Trello and Github providing popular boards.
Unfortunately, every other kind of story doesn’t work so well. Stories that are part of larger work require frequent collaboration as the overall requirements evolve. Conceptually, such stories exist in discrete stages, but in reality stories influence each other: comments and suggestions abound, and traditional Kanban boards don’t have a way to display the true status.
What’s needed is a new type of Kanban board that integrates stories and communication. Suggestions during implementation should result in resolution during review, and failure to do so should be immediately apparent. Status needs to evolve from a simple column into a real-time view of what people are saying about the story.
Without such improvements, Kanban boards are not able to serve the needs of complex development, and will always be a source of frustration.
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