Tag: visualization

visualization board tools

first: you should visualize more.

then:

there’s several things to consider when selecting a board tool. what types of work do you have, what abstraction level is useful to visualize, etc. is any tool already in use and known? how does types of work behave, how much reality is useful to visualize?

there’s roughly 3 types of boards when I look at visual tools.

(first: a swimlane is a visual element separating a type of work vertically. in a grid-based board it’s end-to-end, from left to right, but the columns/ phases are the same for all swimlanes. in a more flexible board it can be a vertical split within a column/ phase, having it’s own customized sub-process.)

1. simple lists.  examples are:

  • trello,
  • o365 planner boards, where there seems to be a shortcut to attach documents from a teamsite related to the (context of the) planner board

2. grid-based boards.

i’ve seen two types of rows in grid-based boards, one where you can define your own end-to-end swimlanes, and one typically used in scrum where each user story is a separate row/ swimlane.

one example is jira boards, in which cards mostly are jira tickets.

3. more flexible boards, that can reflect a more complex reality regarding how different types of work items flows through different phases, subcolumns and sub-swimlanes reflecting custom sub-processes etc.

an example here is LeanKit.

if guided by any kanban (thinking tool) toolbox, remember:

  • start where you are – visualize current state, work behaviour first, then improve step by step (and update visualization in step with that)
  • YAGNI, you ain’t gonna need it, unless you experience that you need it… so start simple unless you see that you need something less simple (f.ex a custom sub-process, a new work type/ card type, etc)

reading tips: kanban learning center by LeanKit, incl Kanban Roadmap/ how to get started, and some howto-s.

regarding board tools, please feel free to share any tips on visualization tools you’ve experienced as useful in your own work.

Intrapreneur Canvas

An internally focused exploration of an idea is different from an externally focused one. In my experience, noticeable differences have been related to market, revenue, customer etc. F.ex, relatively small potential improvements in work within main value streams could clearly dwarf size of investments, or have been considered already.

Anyway, here’s a kind of intranpreneur canvas that’s been useful for me a few times lately when thinking about building new software.

What’s In a Kanban Standup?

First and foremost:

Focus on work items, not people.

Then:

Finishing is more important than starting.

Practical tip: start to the right/ at the end of your board, and identify impediments to finishing tasks as you go upstream on the board.

Only two questions are really necessary in the actual standup if the team’s real process is reflected on the board:

 The team will be asked if the board accurately reflects what is being worked upon. The team will be asked if there is anything that is slowing down or stopping throughput. After these two questions are answered by the team, the stand-up is over.

(Karl Scotland via @dpjoyce.)

Update: a few more reading tips.

Extracting a Personal Kanban from an Overgrown ToDo List

Last week I looked at my overgrown todo list, or rather several lists, and preparation for a demo at work was coming up, and I have a long trip to prepare for… So I simply had to create a personal kanban on the cupboard behind me:   Collaboration on the demo preparation led to tasks on the board, and I took the most important and urgent tasks from my todo lists onto the board. I used a form of priority filter, with a generic todo column to the left, then a “soon”/today column, then the usual doing and done columns. It worked really well to let tasks float up and to the right in the todo columns, kind of like bubbles. I got an immediate impression of relative urgency (more to the right) and relative importance (upwards), making it very easy to decide what the next task should be when I finished a task.

Agile Basics: Visualize More

If you visualize more you get more agile.

Tom Wujec had an excellent TED talk on 3 ways the brain creates meaning.

  • Use images to clarify ideas
    Visual shapes, physical space, colors, motion help us create mental model, more understanding
  • The act of engaging, being interactive enriches mental model
  • Augment memory by creating persistent, evolving views

Let’s say you have a task board for a software development team, either a physical one or a digital one shown on a screen as a dashboard. Let’s say it’s visible in an office so that everyone on and outside the team sees it several times a day.

  • People in and around the team gain a shared mental model, a shared understanding.
  • People interact with the board as things change, including upstream and downstream stakeholders. A visible task board creates more engaged stakeholders.
  • A task board is persistent and evolving, and becomes a new visual, domain-specific language of sorts, where the domain is the reality of the development team.
    This language is a more abstract, high-level language, and enables much more effective thinking, communication, and collaboration.

A software development team communicate and collaborate better the more they visualize the work.

How can you visualize more to gain advantages like that?  Here’s a few examples:
  • Let workflow on task board be closer to reality
  • Show different types of work differently
  • Let a status screen display a virtual task board permanently
  • Are you working in a traditional waterfall project? Regularly print the latest version of the project plan (and progress) and put it on the wall.
  • Show more policies like DoDs, increase transparency
  • Are you doing CI or continuous builds? Create alerts or alarms for failures, include status on status screens.
  • Show problems and impediments clearly
  • Do you share status on sales, bugs, product upgrades, project progress, project backlog etc in monthly or weekly meetings? Make status visible for everyone at anytime via screen or paper.