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Kanban Kit
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Posted by MadaboutDana
May 6, 2015 at 08:48 AM
Okay, so this isn’t, strictly speaking, an outliner, but it’s a neat information manager with outliner-like characteristics!
I’ve just discovered Kanban Kit (unfortunately Mac-only, I fear), which is a very nice, efficient implementation of the Kanban task/project management concept.
What makes it slightly unusual are a couple of extra features: subtasks, and due dates. Otherwise it follows the standard Kanban column-based arrangement, proceeding left to right from ‘Todo’ to ‘Next’ to ‘In Progress’ to ‘Done’.
You can divide up tasks or projects using tags – gratifyingly, you can attach as many tags as you like to a single ‘card’.
While Ulysses is still my go-to task manager, I was looking for something I could quickly slap stuff down on in a very visual way. Kanban Kit fits the bill!
More info at http://screenisland.com/kanban-kit/
Posted by jamesofford
May 6, 2015 at 11:11 AM
Interesting. Looks just like Trello(https://trello.com/). Which is free, runs in the browser, and so is available on both Windows and Mac. It comes from the folks at Fogcreek Software, which is where Joel Spolsky of the famous Joel on Software holds court(http://www.joelonsoftware.com) There is a big community of Trello users out there, and some of them have come up with some interesting ways to use Trello.
I signed up for an account in my search for organizational Nirvana. Since I have reverted to doing things with pens and paper, I haven’t done much with it for a while.
Jim
Posted by Franz Grieser
May 6, 2015 at 01:15 PM
I like the idea behind Personal Kanban: Doing one thing, and one thing only; and keep yourself reminded to to that.
For while, I added a Kanban “board” to my todo list in LibreOffice Calc. But that did not work for me. For me, the Kanban board must be constantly visible. And that’s is the problem with Kanban boards on the PC/Mac: They are usually hidden behind the windows I am working in. I even thought about keeping a board on my iPad next to my monitors but keeping the iPad constantly on seems so ...
Franz
Posted by Paul Korm
May 6, 2015 at 01:52 PM
@jamesofford wrote
>Since I have reverted to doing things with pens and paper, I haven’t done much with it for a while.
I’ve reverted to PostIt notes over and over—especially for anything that I have to do right now, sitting right here. My computer’s bezel is always littered with these.
Posted by Dr Andus
May 6, 2015 at 02:43 PM
Paul Korm wrote:
@jamesofford wrote
>>I have reverted to doing things with pens and paper
>
>I’ve reverted to PostIt notes over and over
Franz Grieser wrote:
>For me, the Kanban board must be
>constantly visible. And that’s is the problem with Kanban boards on the
>PC/Mac: They are usually hidden behind the windows I am working in.
There must be something in the air then… As in recent weeks I have also reverted to a physical A2 corkboard with coloured post-it notes and metal pins (so they don’t fall off), exactly for the reasons Franz mentioned. The board needs to be visible at all times, so computer implementations are no good (unless you can reserve an entire monitor just for that permanently, and have it on permanently, which is a luxury).
I don’t know whether what I’m doing is Kanban or not, as I just made it up by myself, but there are roughly three areas on the corkboard:
1. In the top left I pin the most important and urgent current big task (or mini project), followed by the most immediate and important ones next to it that will need to be tackled when the first one is done). Let’s call this the priority queue (and columns, in the case of simultaneous due dates and tasks).
2. In the top right I have a cluster of post-it notes in chronological order (by deadlines) that I know I will definitely have to do in the foreseeable future (next 6 months roughly), but they are not imminent yet. It is helpful to display these as I can visualise what my workload looks like in the coming months. Moreover, they provide the supply of urgent and important tasks, and they will be gradually moved (inched) forward to the top left, when the time comes.
3. In the bottom right corner I keep a cluster of post-its that have been finished by me, but either they need to be followed up because I’m waiting for someone’s response or action on them, or they are recurrent tasks and they will need to come back up to the top right and then to the top left when the time is right.
Post-it notes with tasks that get done forever get removed and destroyed.
I do use different colours and different sizes of post-it notes to emphasise importance of task and size of the effort needed.
I really enjoy the physicality of the experience, and there is great satisfaction when I get to remove a completed post-it note. And the visualisation of the workload (which forces me to make choices and also decide not to take on more projects until these get done) is a major bonus.
Any other approaches along these lines?