The release button on a Jira Kanban board can be immensely useful even when you don’t do releases!
When you’re using a continuous flow process you don’t always have the concept of releases. But, even when you don’t have releases or iterations, it doesn’t mean that you don’t care about what you’re able to forecast or accomplish in a particular time span. Cadences are extremely important because they help us create habits, for better or worse, and they make sure that we pay attention to things at certain intervals. The alternative is that we think we’ll get around to things and we never do… time flies by and we don’t give things the attention they deserve. Scrum builds in the concept of iterations for which you measure velocity in order to plan for future iterations. In a continuous flow process like Kanban, you still have to look at throughput over time so you can do light forecasting and to reflect on what’s been accomplished. You still need cadences, you just don’t stop the flow for releasing or planning. No matter what method you’re using, it’s always helpful to be able to easily see and discuss what has been accomplished over the past week, month or quarter.
