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Question About Kanban Boards
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Posted by Ken
Dec 16, 2018 at 11:33 PM
I know that Kanban boards are quite popular right now, and in certain work circumstances, they can be quite useful. What I am trying to understand, as a solo user, is if there is a way to use a Kanban workflow when you manage multiple projects at once. Does the paradigm lend itself to this? I can have as many as a dozen different projects/activities going at the same time, each with numerous subtasks with varying degrees of urgency. I just have not seen a Kanban program that easily accommodates a dozen projects without cluttering up a screen, nor have I seen one that can easily identify urgent tasks from all of my projects so I can see what is currently in need of attention. Am I just not seeing the right software, or is this just not the paradigm for handling multiple projects with multiple tasks and subtasks?
—Ken
Posted by satis
Dec 17, 2018 at 01:04 AM
Imagine a corkboard with index cards in, say, 3 columns: To-Do, Doing and Done. That’s the bare essence of kanban. If you can imagine handling multiple projects on one board, great.
Otherwise use multiple boards.
Or a kanban system that has ‘swimlanes,’ like LeanKit to use one example:
https://leankit.com/learn/kanban/kanban-board-examples-for-development-and-operations/
If you have multiple projects running simultaneously with cross-dependencies then it’s probably not your best friend. Something along the lines of a GANTT chart might be
Posted by Ken
Dec 17, 2018 at 01:39 AM
satis wrote:
Imagine a corkboard with index cards in, say, 3 columns: To-Do, Doing
>and Done. That’s the bare essence of kanban. If you can imagine handling
>multiple projects on one board, great.
>
>Otherwise use multiple boards.
>
>Or a kanban system that has ‘swimlanes,’ like LeanKit to use one
>example:
>
>https://leankit.com/learn/kanban/kanban-board-examples-for-development-and-operations/
>
It is not so much cross dependencies that mucks up the Kanban idea for me as much as the discrete boards. I do not want to look at 12 different boards to see what is urgent in each project. I would like to see all of the urgent items shown together (through a filter or search?) in one place and be able to easily identify to which project the task belongs. I have never seen this in the Kanban programs that I have either looked at or tried to use. This was the reason that I posted the question. I am wondering if I am missing something as far as a workable work flow, or if this is just the wrong tool. Currently I use MLO, and while it does what I want, but the UI is not easy to work with. Also, I am just wondering if I am selling Kanban boards short for this type of work.
—Ken
>If you have multiple projects running simultaneously with
>cross-dependencies then it’s probably not your best friend. Something
>along the lines of a GANTT chart might be
Posted by Paul Korm
Dec 17, 2018 at 02:08 AM
I believe the examples at the LeanKit site are probably more suited to a team of individuals working on a software development project. Kanban originated in manufacturing as a just-in-time scheduling system, so that everyone involved in the effort had a common understanding of what resources were needed where in the process.
For individuals, the “waiting”, “doing”, “done” three-board model without swim lanes is probably sufficient.
Posted by Luhmann
Dec 17, 2018 at 04:30 AM
I think there are some apps that offer “filters” which can show you priority tasks across multiple boards. AirTable can do this but doesn’t yet offer a Kanban view on iOS. I forget but I think MeisterTask might also offer such features…
https://airtable.com/
https://www.meistertask.com/
Another approach is to use IFTTT to create a todo in a task manager which supports it when you are assigned a high priority task in Trello.
https://ifttt.com/applets/341989p-sync-trello-and-todoist?term=trello