I was at a computational biology symposium yesterday and one of the speakers mentioned that his group has been using a methodology called Kanban with pretty excellent results. <div><br></div><div>I found a good article about it here: <a href="http://www.agileproductdesign.com/blog/2009/kanban_over_simplified.html">http://www.agileproductdesign.com/blog/2009/kanban_over_simplified.html</a></div>
<div><br></div><div>If you skip ahead to "Kanban development distilled", there's an image that should give you a good feel for the methodology. Kanban limits work in progress by giving you a set number of slots in each of a few development stages. Eg: 4 slots in the "development" stage means that only 4 things can be developed at a time. To start development on another task, you need to finish development on one of your existing tasks and move it to the next stage (if there's room).</div>
<div><br></div><div>Anyway, it's an interesting concept that may not be immediately applicable to the work that we're all doing, but it's definitely something to be aware of.</div><div><br></div><div>-Adam</div>