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I am wondering how to construct a Kanban and generate meaningful cumulative flow diagrams in a scenario where steps are not required to be performed in the same order.

As an example, we might have columns "Development" followed by "Write-tests". But some developers write their tests first, in a "test-driven" or "behavior-driven" way.

I can make the workflow accommodate flow in either direction, but the resulting CFD will be skewed.

I could also merge the dev and test into a single column, but they are really different value-adds and the resulting cards would be larger than I want them to be.

Is there a Kanban way of handling such scenarios?

Victor Grazi
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    When you have a column "write tests", the other column should be named "write functional code", since both of those tasks are development activities. Moreover, trying to map tasks which should happen interwoven, and with a pulse measured in minutes, not days, is IMHO quite meaningless, you will have more effort to update your Kanban board than for writing code. – Doc Brown Jul 08 '18 at 13:21
  • horizontal swim lanes. Although with testing you should have the test written first, to avoid failed testing forcing a backward move – Ewan Jul 08 '18 at 13:28
  • Do you only have the unit-tests written using TDD, or do you also have other testing activities like integration tests or system tests? – Bart van Ingen Schenau Jul 08 '18 at 19:03
  • Doc Brown, it is days. – Victor Grazi Jul 10 '18 at 15:48
  • Bart good question. Integration tests are written after the code, before QA. QA then write additional tests in their tools – Victor Grazi Jul 10 '18 at 15:49

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Don't have a separate column. I know it's an example used everywhere but it's more geared at highlighting waste between steps, the TDD cycle is pretty tight.

I'd recoummend Development column with sub column Dev Active and Dev Done. Then next would be Demo Active and Demo Done, Prod Deploy Active Prod Deploy Done. What this let's you see is how much time is wasted in the Dev Done column because your PO is unavailable for Demo etc.

For functional tests etc you can set a policy for the column, it can't move into Dev Done until Functional Tests have been written and are passing etc.

danswain
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