Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kanban Tool (2nd nomination)

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. slakr\ talk / 18:22, 30 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Kanban Tool[edit]

AfDs for this article:
Kanban Tool (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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Article was previously deleted via AfD for these same problems, but recreated via AfC. As with the previous AfD: Non-notable software with insufficient reliable, secondary, independent sources available. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 03:19, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment regarding sources - The AfC was approved for having fixed the sourcing problem and being sufficiently different from the deleted version, but in looking closely at the refs, I'm seeing the same problems and some familiar links. The Raju ref, which is duplicated in the list, is a couple sentences of promotional copy in a list of 15 on a website of generally dubious reliability; everything by David Anderson is self-published; Mead is again a small item in a longer list; Moran is self-published but borderline; the Shore Labs refs are written by this company; Github is certainly not a reliable source; Noorani et al. links to Kanban Tool with a referral link (i.e. they're paid for mentioning it); Liles is a primary source (interview); Marczak appears to just be a list. --— Rhododendrites talk \\ 03:22, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:40, 4 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:42, 4 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - I am a Kanban enthusiast and Kanban user. This is the only article about one of the very first and most recognizable software tools for Kanban, and I feel it deserves to be kept. I do believe that this article is not only based on creditable sources but it is also useful to Wikipedia readers. Looking closely at the refs, I cannot agree that the sources provided are of poor value or little notability and reliability.

In answer to Rhododendrites reason for deletion, I would like to defend and clarify the sources/refs that the author has added.

Although David Anderson hasn't got a dedicated article, he is clearly stated as the person who formulated Kanban method for development process [in the article on Kanban (development) [1], which references to the exact same books, as the article on Kanban Tool]. Therefore I trust, that it should not be discredited as a source. Also, books by this particular author are greatly regarded in the Kanban community. So the fact that D. Anderson self-publishes his own books should not be equalized with their low reliability, as both his books and he himself are recognized and respected by the Kanban society (including Wikipedia's articles on Kanban). Therefore, David Anderson is perceived as a father of Kanban in development by Kanban community as well as a developer of the Kanban method by Wikipedia. If he is so insignificant then why his opinions are stated in Kanban (development) Wikipedia's article? I don't think there is any more notable person in terms of Kanban in development.

The Marczak reference might be perceived as a list, but in fact it is a list of the top 15 Startup Fest Festival's finalists. StartUp Fest Festival is apparently the most important startup competition for aspiring founders, ground-breaking innovators, and entrepreneurs from all over Poland, and in itself I consider a good reason for notability. This implies that - out of thousands of companies taking part in this competition - Kanban Tool was selected a notable, outstanding one. Furthermore, I've found that Marczak's blog antyweb.pl is 1 of 10 most popular blogs and 1 of 3 most popular tech-blogs in Poland. Sources: [2] [3] [4]

The Liles article indeed seems a primary source, but I would imagine, that the reason there is a reference to it, is that it contains an objective mention of Kanban Tool's success. As the introduction reads, Kanban Tool was awarded the Best Start-Up With Global Potential award by the US-Polish Trade Council for 2012, and this, I feel, is a solid evidence of the service's notability. Furthermore, it provides an insider's look into how this company works and how the service was created. Source: [5]

The particular listing on Github simply confirms that Kanban Tool uses backbone.js.

The mention at bitelia.com might be a small item, but the content seems to be written by independent writers, associated with bitelia.com. I feel that this shouldn't discredit the content, which is genuine and objective.

References to shorelabs.com and kanbantool.com websites do not stray from the general pattern of self-referencing ever-present in Wikipedia articles. The facts remain, that no matter how many reviewers write about Kanban Tool, the largest amount of useful information is being published on the service provider's own website. If the idea of Wikipedia is to deliver knowledge - this, I think, is the author's attempt at allowing the public access to the most appropriate and insightful facts on Kanban Tool.

The current references in the Kanban Tool article include three insightful reviews that seem not to have been taken into account when proposing the article for deletion. They are: Startup Magazine (in Polish) [Nieśmiertelne karteczki w wirtualnej odsłonie". Startup Magazine (in Polish) (Poland): 6–7. January 2013. ISSN 2083-909X], as well as one in German in Linux Magazin [Eckenfels, M. (June 2014). "Tolle Tafeln". Linux Magazin (in German) (Germany: Linux New Media): 44–45. ISSN 1432-640X], and one in English [Gibson, Jake (20 May 2014). "The Best Software Tools to Run a Startup". Entrepreneur Magazine (United States: Entrepreneur Media). ISSN 0163-3341]. All of them were published by magazines regarded as small business authority, and all of them are notable, independent, printed sources of information. I trust that content, that was published in national magazines is a great proof of Kanban Tool's reliability, as well as notability and would like for Wikipedia to, please, respect that. If those are not reliable sources then what are?

I would also like to add that Kanban Tool was included in the shortlist of Steve Blank's Startup Tools, which wasn't mentioned anywhere in the article's references. Steve Blank is a notable entrepreneur and start-up expert; [6]. And after a quick research I found some other good references in the following: Studyguide for Matching Supply with Demand: An Introduction to Operations Management by Gerard Cachon ISBN 9780073525204 [7] Agile SAP: Introducing flexibility, transparency and speed to SAP implementations by Sean Robson ISBN 9781849284455 [8] [9]

I feel that, even though not perfect, the article is vital to the Kanban community and it deserves to be edited and improved rather than deleted. --AgileWriter (talk) 12:59, 7 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • @AgileWriter: Thanks for weighing in and providing some leads for people to follow. Regarding the existing sources, though, your explanations for why they're valid conflict in some ways with Wikipedia policy for what is necessary to establish notability, which is somewhat different from what is considered a reliable source for other purposes (terms like notability, reliable source, and verifiability are kind of technical terms on Wikipedia, which can be complicated and indeed a little annoying if you're just starting to explore them). A couple examples: Although David Anderson hasn't got a dedicated article, he is clearly stated as the person who formulated Kanban method for development process [in the article on Kanban (development) [1], which references to the exact same books, as the article on Kanban Tool]. Therefore I trust, that it should not be discredited as a source -- It's not discredited because he's not knowledgeable; it's discounted because all of those sources are self-published, and self-published by someone with invested interests no less. The Wikipedia perspective on the issue is that in order to maintain a neutral point of view, we as editors need a quasi-objective measure of reliability, so primary sources are ruled out because if something is truly respected or well-known, other people will have written about it (as a secondary source) and it's those we should cite. no matter how many reviewers write about Kanban Tool, the largest amount of useful information is being published on the service provider's own website. -- Indeed reliable for, say, backing up some information about the software, but again doesn't help to establish notability -- which isn't to say it's not accurate information, but that notability is measured only by secondary sources. --— Rhododendrites talk \\ 04:13, 8 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Rhododendrites: I agree that David Anderson may be perceived as a primary source, but none the less, I think his books are influential, objective and worth keeping as a reference.

I still think that this article is about a notable subject, and should be kept. Apart from the 9 good references originally posted in the Kanban Tool article (it's 9, once you exclude the one discounted as a list [Raju, S. (23 January 2011). "Top 15 Kanban Tools in an Agile World". Tools Journal. Retrieved 30 June 2014.] and all Shore Labs references), there are the 5 new ones that I found and posted in my comment above, including non-self-published books.

Regarding secondary sources coverage, it seems that there are many academic works referencing Kanban Tool, all written on the subject of Agile methods, created and reviewed by independent researchers. Just today, after a quick search, I've found the following from different universities around the world: CORONA, E., & PANI, F. E. (2013). A Review of Lean-Kanban Approaches in the Software Development. WSEAS Transactions on Information Science and Applications, 10(1), 1-13[10], Rola, L. D. (2011). Kanban for Small Software Projects. Project Background Report, The University of Manchester, Manchester[11], da Silva, J. N. (2014). Projeto de Conclusão de Curso Título: Uma ferramenta para cálculo de Métricas Lean, BSI UFRPE[12], Chekhlov, A (2014). ScrumBan pro malé a střední firmy, MASARYKOVA UNIVERZITA FAKULTA INFORMATIKY, Brno[13].

This proves that the reliable, secondary sources are there, and finding even more shouldn't be an issue. I have now added them to the original article.

The fact, that different people write about Kanban Tool independently, and in different countries, really does prove the software's notability, or at least gives reasonable doubt to the claim that the article's subject is not notable, and for such, deletion would be inappropriate.--AgileWriter (talk) 13:02, 9 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sources
  1. ^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_%28development%29
  2. ^ http://pbi.org.pl/aktualnosci/Blogerzy%20w%20Polsce%202013%20%2818kwi13%29.pdf
  3. ^ http://www.kominek.in/2014/01/ranking-najbardziej-wplywowych-blogerow-w-2013-roku/
  4. ^ http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog_Roku
  5. ^ http://kanbantool.com/blog/kanbantool-start-up-winner
  6. ^ http://steveblank.com/tools-and-blogs-for-entrepreneurs/
  7. ^ http://books.google.pl/books?id=EpQlAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT163&dq=%22Kanban+Tool%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=NuHQU4XJCfHP4QSD44HgCA&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22Kanban%20Tool%22&f=false
  8. ^ http://books.google.pl/books?id=GbkcAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA161&lpg=PA161&dq=%22kanban+tools%22&source=bl&ots=zs3XIyNmyt&sig=C3zdyMv25LU0iIh4Qi3VryDfvn0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=uVHBUsW_C-Gs7QbZzoAg&ved=0CHAQ6AEwBzgo#v=snippet&q=%22kanbantool%22&f=false
  9. ^ http://collaboration.about.com/od/projectmanagement/tp/7-Kanban-Board-Tools-For-Project-Collaboration.htm
  10. ^ http://www.wseas.org/multimedia/journals/information/2013/5709-110.pdf
  11. ^ http://studentnet.cs.manchester.ac.uk/resources/library/thesis_abstracts/BkgdReportsMSc11/Rola-LucasD-bkgd-rept.pdf
  12. ^ http://200.17.137.109:8081/novobsi/bsi-na-ufrpe-recife/trabalhos-de-conclusao-de-curso/2014.1/Uma%20ferramenta%20para%20calculo%20de%20Metricas%20Lean_Jessica%20Nunes.pdf
  13. ^ http://is.muni.cz/th/418144/fi_m/dp_xchekhl.pdf
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, -- RoySmith (talk) 00:35, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, merging some material. In the explantion above, AgileWriter says that many references are essentially the same as the article Kanban (development). this is a reason for merging, not for having two articles. It is fairly obvious that an article about the method will mention the various devices; the references added are pparently about using the method in general. DGG ( talk ) 16:20, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, NorthAmerica1000 23:37, 21 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - After taking a significant amount of time to check all of the english language refs linked above and in the article, there is no significant RS coverage of this specific software. There is extensive coverage of the concept, not the software. Most refs which do cover the software are incidental mentions in lists of various software tools using the kanban concept. The refs that have more extensive coverage of the software fail to meet the standards of RS in various ways pointed out by Rhododendrites above.Dialectric (talk) 03:06, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Dialectric: Seems bizarre to disregard all these 20+ sources - it is a wider and better coverage than most of project management software articles I came across on Wikipedia. But my point is, that such coverage in many indpendent sources, both in printed newspapers, academic works and books, all found in short time (by me), give reasonable doubt to the claim that the article's subject is not notable, and per Wikipedia notability guidelines (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability) "For articles of unclear notability, deletion should be a last resort.". Given the above, this article should be kept with all problems highlighted, so that it can be later improved. AgileWriter (talk) 15:22, 23 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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