{"id":3471,"date":"2025-01-16T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-16T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/getnave.com\/blog\/?p=3471"},"modified":"2025-01-16T15:33:22","modified_gmt":"2025-01-16T14:33:22","slug":"kanban-analytics-to-streamline-your-scrum-events","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/getnave.com\/blog\/kanban-analytics-to-streamline-your-scrum-events\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Use Kanban Analytics to Streamline Your Scrum Events"},"content":{"rendered":"
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More and more Scrum teams realize the benefits of adopting Kanban to manage their work more effectively. And the benefits are countless. Adopting practices from both worlds is a very effective strategy, which provides many businesses with an unprecedented competitive advantage.<\/p>\n

Today, we\u2019ll explore how your team can leverage Kanban analytics to streamline your Scrum events and improve the predictability of your delivery system.<\/p>\n

Sprint Planning Meeting: Determine the Amount of Work You Can Commit To<\/h2>\n

The goal of Sprint Planning is to come up with an agreement on what will get done and how it will be achieved. And the first step to make an objective decision on how much work your team can handle during the Sprint is to explore your capability. The most effective approach you can take is to look into your previous sprints and see how many items you have completed per sprint in the past 3 to 6 months.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

The Throughput Histogram<\/a> shows the number of items you completed in a certain period. To track the number of tasks delivered per sprint, we will group our data by 2 weeks and we will set the start date of the chart to match the start of a sprint.<\/p>\n

Looking into the example above, we can see that there was 1 sprint in which this team managed to deliver 5 items, 2 sprints in which they finished 10 items, 1 sprint with 12 items, another 2 sprints with 14 items, and so forth. You can now use this analysis in your next Sprint Planning to better understand your capacity.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s analyze the example above. This team can schedule at least 5 items. This is their absolute minimum. They guarantee that they will deliver at least 5 items and that commitment comes with a 98% certainty that this will happen.<\/p>\n

Then, there is an 85% chance that they will deliver at least 10 items and a 70% chance that they will finish more than 12 items. The chance that they will complete 14 items drops down to about 50%.<\/p>\n

Even though this team managed to finish 24 items in one of their previous sprints, it is unlikely that they will be able to deliver that much work consistently (the probability that comes with this commitment is less than 30%). If they commit to that number, it is very likely that some of the work will be rescheduled for the next iteration.<\/p>\n

Use this information as a guide to determine the amount of product backlog items necessary to achieve your sprint goal.<\/strong> And if your team commits to a number that comes with low confidence of that being achieved, put that commitment into question. The greatest benefit of performing analysis based on throughput is that it represents your actual capability to deliver.<\/p>\n

Daily Standup Meeting: Plan the Work for the Day<\/h2>\n

The purpose of the Daily Standup is to agree on a plan for the day so that you can frequently inspect and adapt.<\/p>\n

To keep your workflow stable and preserve the predictability of your delivery system, the most important aspect that you should focus on is to evaluate the age of the remaining items<\/a>. The Aging Chart<\/a> is the tool at your disposal that will help you track your WIP age.<\/p>\n

\"Aging<\/a><\/p>\n

The Aging Chart has the same structure as your board with columns representing the states in your workflow. The height of the dots depicts how much time each work item has already spent in progress. The higher the dot, the larger the chance of a delay.<\/p>\n

The colored zones draw the timeline of how your previous work items moved through your process. We recommend looking into the items that cross the yellow zone, as these items have already spent more time in your process than half of the tasks completed so far.<\/p>\n

During your Daily Standup, walk the Aging Chart from right to left, top to bottom. Keep your focus on the work items that are close to being completed and have spent the most time in the process.<\/strong> Let your team handle them first. That way, you\u2019ll prevent your work from aging artificially which in turn will improve the predictability of your system<\/a>.<\/p>\n