Kanban in Context

There is a wide range of tools that allow teams to create Kanban diagrams, but Enterprise Architect stands on its own as a tool that not only allows a team to use the Kanban features but is also a sophisticated platform for managing the work products of every discipline working on Enterprise, Business or Technology initiatives. This means that instead of having to access other tools or out-of-date documentation or schedule meetings the information related to a work items is immediately available inside the same repository. An analyst, developer, tester or other team member working on a User Story, Feature, or Defect can locate the related Requirements, Business Rules Policies, Standard Operating Procedures, Strategies, Drivers, Goals, Stakeholders Requirements, Architectural designs, Principles, Programming Code, Database and Information Schemas, XML definitions, Messages, Test Cases, Applications, Deployment Targets and Specifications and more.

Relating Model Elements

Enterprise Architect allows a user to create any number of connections between model elements, using the connectors that form part of the chosen modeling language. Any item that appears in a Kanban diagram can be dragged onto any other diagram and then connections can be added. For example, a User Story that is coming to the top of a backlog or is in a Queue lane in a Kanban diagram could be added to a Business or Stakeholder Requirements diagram, and Trace relationships could be added between the User Story and the Requirements, indicating which requirements relate to the Story.

Finding Related Model Elements

The work items in a Kanban board can be related to any other elements in the model, allowing a graph to be defined. While it is possible to add your own connections, quite typically other team members working in related disciplines and parts of the repository will have already added relationships to other model elements, which in turn will be related to still other elements and so on.

These connections can all be visualized in existing diagrams, but a modeler can create a new diagram and place the work item in the center of the diagram, choosing the Insert Related Elements feature to insert the graph of related elements that can be configured to draw an expressive diagram reaching out to the very corners of the repository.

This diagram shows the result of using the Insert Related Elements feature to find the important information needed when working on a User Story.