Talks to Watch

Agile Project Management with Kanban | Eric Brechner | Talks at Google

441K views · Apr 6, 2016 · 1:04:31 · 2 HN recommenders · 3 mentions · discussed 2021–2026

Eric Brechner, a Microsoft Xbox development manager, presents his Kanban approach for agile project management at Talks at Google. He covers using sticky notes to organize work, estimate and meet deadlines.

Why Hacker News points people here: Recommended as a clear description of how Kanban works and a practical alternative to sprints.

“Eric Brechner of Microsoft (of all possible places...) gives a great talk on his team's approach”HN comment, 2026

What Hacker News said 3

RecommendsacjacobsonOct 2022

“I thing Eric Brechner does a great job of describing it”

Eric Brechner describes how Kanban works

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If you're interested learning more about Kanban, I thing Eric Brechner does a great job of describing it - this video

in “I don’t believe in sprints” · view on HN
RecommendsBalinaresApr 2026

“Eric Brechner of Microsoft (of all possible places...) gives a great talk on his team's approach”

Microsoft team's agile approach as a starting point

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I mean, Switzerland and North Korea both call themselves democracies but the specifics matter. The specifics matter! These discussions are always fascinating in a sort of baffling way to me because I've only had great experiences with what I call agile. Like, you bring it into the team and within months everyone is gushing about how much better life is now. Yet threads like this one are full of people reporting awful experiences. Apparently whatever it is they're doing involves a lot of meetings and little actual flexibility? The deeply unexpected thing about that, to me, is, if they hate some parts of the process, why are they keeping them? Every team and every business is different and you have to iterate to arrive at whatever will work best for you. That's possibly the one most important point, IMO. Dropping the things that don't work is a key part of that! Eric Brechner of Microsoft (of all possible places...) gives a great talk on his team's approach, and I've had good experiences using it as a starting point: this video But again, every team is different. Even the greatest possible theoretical approach is only a starting point. And like with Switzerland vs North Korea, I guess the key thing is how much ownership of the process those subjected to it have?

Cites itkwanbixFeb 2021

“instead of two as explained by Eric Brechner.”

Brechner explains using two columns per kanban step

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I always wonder why most implementation of kamban use only one column per step, instead of two as explained by Eric Brechner. this video

in “Kanban board in one HTML using localstorage” · view on HN