Flow-based planning (often called Kanban

A system of tracking work across various stages of development. Work is represented by cards, and stages are represented by columns on a board. A card is moved to the next column when it enters the next stage.

) is a popular lean

Software development practices adapted from the Lean Manufacturing principles developed by Toyota. The focus of Lean methodology is to eliminate waste, amplify learning, decide as late as possible, deliver as fast as possible, build integrity, empower the team, and see the whole. You may practice Lean in CA Agile Central by using the Kanban Board and Portfolio Kanban Board apps.

methodology that maximizes a team's efficiency and eliminates bottlenecks. There are no timeboxes, task

A unit of work that, when performed, contributes to the fulfillment and completion of a scheduled user story within the iteration. Tasks allow decomposition of stories into manageable units of work. Team members can take responsibility and ownership for each task, providing estimates and work left to do for completion.

estimates, or review meetings. There is also no scrum master role—the team owns the process of how work gets done. Using measurements of queues, cycle time, and work-in-progress (WIP), the team decides how well their process is working and whether it needs adjustment. Flow, not cadence, determines a team's success.

Flow-based work includes holding a daily standup

A brief meeting held between the delivery team, product owner, and scrum master. While everyone stands (to keep the meeting from running long) each team member reports on what work they did yesterday, what they plan to do today, and alerts the scrum master of any issues that may be blocking them.

meeting to discuss recently-completed stories and prioritizing and assigning stories in progress. Instead of creating tasks, a team member takes the next item from the queue of stories.

Build a Kanban Board

The central tool of flow-based work is the Kanban board. The Kanban board gives teams the option of managing pull-based, lean software development projects.

The Kanban board allows all team members, whether local or remote, to communicate and prioritize with each other.

Product backlog

A prioritized list of functional and non-functional requirements for a system or product. A product backlog may be created and prioritized on the Backlog page, under the Plan menu in CA Agile Central.

, time-boxed iterations and estimation are unnecessary when using a Kanban system since work is pulled into Kanban and the queue is the only work of interest. Assign defects and stories to the first Kanban state

A condition during the life of a work item where it satisfies given criteria. Examples include defined, in-progress, completed, open, closed, released, and so on.

visible on your board.

Use the Portfolio Kanban Board

If you have CA Agile Central Portfolio Manager (RPM), you can use the Portfolio Kanban board to plan feature

An improvement or capability of value to a stakeholder that can be developed in a PSI or release timebox (usually 10-12 weeks).

delivery in a continuous flow

A type of software methodology that allows new code to be released as soon as it is finished, instead of holding to a defined release schedule. See also Lean.

. The Portfolio Kanban

An app that helps you track the status of your portfolio items as they move along in your portfolio process.

board helps you track the status of your portfolio items as they move along in your portfolio process.

Estimate Throughput

Maximum throughput is the objective by finding bottlenecks in your process and limiting the work-in-progress to get work done effectively and efficiently.

Consider the following when estimating throughput:

• How effective is your current process? Should it be adjusted?
• Which team members are overloaded?
• How much time will it take to release

  A timebox where work occurs in support of an internal or external delivery of a working, tested version of the system or software. In scrum, a release consists of multiple iterations to deliver new system code.

  this feature?
• Are there any bottlenecks—now or potentially in the future?
• What is the planned release date for this feature?