Debriefs, Later and calmer updates

When your team takes larger steps with kanman, you don’t watch every change. What you want to know afterwards is how it went: did kanman deliver what was planned, where did the plan change, what did it leave out, and was anything hard. kanman answers that in a debrief after every delivered story and every delivered outcome.

What a debrief says

A few minutes after a story is merged, kanman writes its debrief:

• A short summary in kanman’s words: what was delivered and the one thing worth knowing.
• Planned vs done: how many of the story’s acceptance criteria were proven when the change was merged.
• Time: how long the story took from start to delivery, how many attempts it needed, and how much of that kanman was working versus waiting on people (for an answer, an approval or a merge). Waiting is no failure; it shows where your team’s time goes.
• Plan changes: what changed on the way and why, for example a criterion someone changed while the run waited, an answer to a question, a split into smaller stories, or a second attempt after the first one failed.
• Left for later: work kanman did not do in this story, with the reason, and the story it filed for it.
• Went well and was hard: a few honest points.

Once every story of an outcome is delivered, kanman writes the outcome’s debrief too: the stories added up, worded as one.

The facts (criteria, attempts, times, changes) come from kanman’s own records of the work. The summary and the points are worded by your team’s AI model; teams that run everything on their own runners have them worded on their runner. When no model is available, kanman words the debrief from the facts alone. Dependency updates and other maintenance get the facts-only debrief.

Where you find it

• On the story’s card in the team chat. A delivered story’s card shows Debrief with what it left for later and how many plan changes there were. Open it to read the debrief in place. While kanman is still writing it, the card says so.

• On the outcome’s page. Open an outcome from its card on the board: a delivered outcome shows its debrief under its progress.

• In the chat. Ask kanman in a team chat (or in General, for all your teams):

  • “What did you leave for later this week?”
  • “Where did plans change?”
  • “What went well?”

  kanman answers from the debriefs of the last seven days, with the stories it left for later and their keys.

Later: nothing silently disappears

Everything a debrief leaves for later becomes a story in the team’s Backlog, linked to the story it came from and with the reason in its description. Until someone starts them, they wait there as cards on the team’s board, and an outcome’s page lists the ones its stories left under Later.

A Later story counts in no outcome until you place it. Approve it, move it into an outcome or close it like any other story. Once someone starts it, it leaves Later and moves along the board like any other story.

Calmer updates in team chats

Every story has one card in the team chat that keeps itself up to date. How often it moves to the bottom of the chat is your choice, under Your settings > Notifications > Story updates in team chats:

Decisions about a story always show in its card, whatever you choose.

Related

• Outcomes
• Stories
• Notifications