Kanban Boards

[Pot Bellied Fool]

I seem to recall a thread mentioning Kanban Boards a little while back with some good advice in it but can't find it offhand, so...

My weak point is definately time management & keeping an eye on workflows and I'm determined to address this. Certainly in past lives, I ruled everything with a huge whiteboard in the (electronics) workshop and think that a Kanban/To-do board will help now.

I'm now a one-man band (+ subbies from time to time ad-hoc), specialising in SEO/Social Media type stuff.

If any of the existing Kanban users/gurus can cast an eye over my thoughts then so much the better...

There's three areas really. Sales(including marketing/quotes/networking) : Operational (the actual working at the coal face) : Admin (all the other business overhead tasks

I'm thinking of arranging it in the following sort of way

One stream with just two cells (Not Done : Done) for the repetitive Monthly tasks that need doing every month, be it a regular update meeting, bank reconciliation or Google analytics download. [Should this perhaps have a third cell for In progress?]

A large holding pen cell for all the raw 'to-do' tasks. Regardless of whether they be sales/admin/operartional.

Then streams for each Admin : Sales : Operational with three cells in each. Next Up : Doing : Done - with the 'next' & 'doing' limited to 3 or 4 items.

As I see it, items would move from the overall raw to-do pile into the 'Next Up' slot for their category when a slot becomes available and then on into the 'doing' as slot became available.

But what to do about items that are in 'Doing' but then at a halt due to waiting for client response for example? Just put a red magnetic marker on them as 'in limbo' (and allow another item in) or move them to another cell?

Bit of a stream of consciousness there but any ideas on tweaking the approach most welcome!

Thanks - Dunc

[Simbu]

A different business and nature of work to you, but perhaps you can take away from the process we use. We're a software development team of ~15 engineers plus designers and testers, all working on the same product. All tasks are intermingled; feature work, 'tech debt' (internal improvements), bugs.

Our categories and flow: To be prioritised -> Backlog (sorted by priority) -> Blocked <-> In progress -> Deploying -> Done

All are unsorted, apart from the Backlog. 'In progress' onwards cards will have developers etc assigned to them. Sometimes earlier ones if the dev has an interest in the card. 'In progress' cards can move back to 'Blocked' if they're waiting on a 3rd party outside of the team doing something. This could be another dev team or a Product manager decision (in a way our client).

Generally once a week our product manager and team will go through the To be Prioritised and Backlog, to prioritise and create 'acceptance criteria' for the cards.

We manage this online using a web app called Trello. It's free for basic use. Other online systems are available, such as AgileZen.

[Stevanos]

Trello is a great tool for this!

[Pot Bellied Fool]

Thanks Guys, thoughts appreciated. A separate area for blocked might well be a good idea to help visibility of what's in progress.

I'm doing this on a real whiteboard as although a geek, my mind works best sometimes when confronted with something that I walk past rather than having to activate - and therefore have the potential to ignore! &#128515;

I haven't created the layout yet so will bear this in mind. Cheers

[akirk]

I run a web company and we have our own coded internal project manager - the main screen is four columns:

Active projects
projects back with the client
Leads
internal

each then has tasks against it...

i.e. something that works for your business is ideal...