Agile 2013 - Updates from the Biodome
Categories:
Active Listening,
Agile,
Agile 2013,
Agile Atlas,
Agile Manifesto,
business value estimation,
Chet Hendrickson,
Chris Sims,
Communication,
David Bernstein,
intuition,
Jim Elvridge,
kanban,
LeanKit,
Monte Carlo Analysis,
NLP,
Non-violent communication,
NVC,
Questions,
Ron Jeffries,
SAFE,
Scrum
Categories: Active Listening, Agile, Agile 2013, Agile Atlas, Agile Manifesto, business value estimation, Chet Hendrickson, Chris Sims, Communication, David Bernstein, intuition, Jim Elvridge, kanban, LeanKit, Monte Carlo Analysis, NLP, Non-violent communication, NVC, Questions, Ron Jeffries, SAFE, Scrum
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Day 1 of Agile 2013 is in the books. There are over 1,700 Agilists who have gathered in the Gaylord Opryland in Nashville to sharpen up their skills in all things related to Agile. For those who are unable to attend, Projects at Work and BigVisible Solutions are co-sponsoring interviews with speakers, attendees and vendors who are participating in the event. Our goal is to provide updates for you throughout the event so that even if you weren't able to join us in the Gaylord Biosphere you will be able to keep pace with what's going on. For the rest of the week, keep checking back here for new interviews and show news brought to you by Projects at Work and BigVisible. Here are some of the interviews we shot today:
Interview with Ron Jeffries and Chet Hendrickson on how well the Agile Manifesto has maintained it's applicability since it was created back in 2001 and an update on the Agile Atlas.
David Bernstein offers some details on his Agile 2013 presentation on how the kinds of questions we ask ourselves and others can help us become better collaborators, coaches, and impact our very quality of life.
Jim Elvridge explains the importance of not just relying on data and paying attention to you intuition in Agile.
A product update on LeanKit's new advanced predictive simulation features from CEO and co-founder Chris Hefley.
Chris Sims gives an update on the talks he is giving here in Nashville on Business Value Estimation in Agile and the importance of Active Listening.
We'll have lots more tomorrow, so keep checking back for more. |
Personal Kanban - App Review Update: LeanKit and Kanban Pad
Categories:
kanban,
Kanban Pad,
LeanKit,
personal kanban,
personal productivity,
personal project management,
productivity,
WIP
Categories: kanban, Kanban Pad, LeanKit, personal kanban, personal productivity, personal project management, productivity, WIP
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I mentioned before that I was happy enough with LeanKit that after I had adapted to using it, that I was not going to keep testing out different apps for Personal Kanban. What can I say...
I was pretty happy with LeanKit from a Personal Kanban standpoint. When I checked it against my original criteria a few weeks ago, it only hit 50% of my original requirements:
But that was better than none, and it let me do some stuff I felt was really important:
I am also part of a volunteer group that had made a decision to use it and we were able to get full access to the tool which opened up some additional functionality. Being able to attach files to card and assign them to multiple individuals is something I found very helpful when using it with a team. And then.....
I went to a meeting. I sat next to someone way smarter to me. I glanced at his screen and saw that he was using a Kanban app. Since he is smarter than me, and had come to a meeting with just an iPad (an obvious indicator of superior intellect and travel skill), and his screen was filled with a lot of really bright colors, it became obvious to me that this was an app worthy of further investigation. And this is how I was introduced to Kanban Pad.
When I compare this Kanban Pad against my original criteria:
Another great feature is that the Product Backlog and Backlog of work that has moved past Accepted (meaning it no longer needs to be seen), can be maintained off the main task board. Kanban Pad also allows you to establish WIP limits for your queues and it warns you fairly incessantly about your flagrant violation of them should you choose to venture off the path. (I ended up not using this feature because my frustration over the warnings became more significant than my desire to maintain WIP limits.
There are a number of additional features that Kanban Pad offers, but those are the ones that have proven to be most valuable to me from a Personal Kanban perspective. By way of a final verdict/opinion on the app, I offer this... I've been using Kanban Pad for about 6-8 weeks now. It has become my primary tool for managing my work using Personal Kanban. After all my efforts at trying to find a way to use Things as a tool for Personal Kanban, I've all but stopped using Things and only open it (or Reminders) now when I have to capture something that I will add to my task board later. |
The app works great on an iPad or in a web browser. It's easy to drag cards from one column to another. And technically, Kanban Pad works on an iPhone as well. They do have a version sized for the small screen. Unfortunately, in the smaller screen, you can only view one column at a time. Trying to move tasks between columns in this format left me feeling like I was wearing boxing gloves while carrying a small child, a folding chair and trying to eat an ice cream cone at the same time.
Kanban Pad does allow for customizable, swim lanes, but not in exactly the same way that you'd set them up on a physical board. It allows you to establish multiple columns and within each column the Type setting allows you to establish Queue, In Progress or Queue and In Progress workflows. By using Queue and In Progress and editing the labels, I found an easy solution to my recurring task issue.
The app includes a feature where you can customize colored tags which can be applied to each task so that you can tell what type of work you are looking at.
Personal Kanban : The Heart of Darkness
Categories:
kanban,
kanbanfor1,
LeanKit,
personal kanban,
personal productivity,
productivity,
Things,
Trello
Categories: kanban, kanbanfor1, LeanKit, personal kanban, personal productivity, productivity, Things, Trello
 Personal Kanban Experiment... Weeks 10-12 Kanban. (expletive) Towards the end of my experiment with Kanban-for-1 I was feeling like I had lost my way. I was still carrying too much work to be able to make use of Kanban-for-1, but my attempts at using it had taught me a number of useful things.
I toyed with the idea of trying to get a piece of plastic that I could use for a physical board and that I could roll up and carry with me. But I’m guessing that the person in seat 21A (who is probably still a bit irked about losing the battle for the armrest) is not going to take kindly to me unrolling my big Kanban board to work on it mid flight.  The Horror, The HorrorI did attempt to use my Kanban journal. This is the book I make notes in each week on how things are going. I carry it with me each time I go on the road, so it seems like a great fit. Exiting Kanban-for -1, I re-created all my post its and created a PK Board in my notebook that was just like the one on my wall. It worked great until I actually placed the post-its in the book. I was right back to the Kanban-for-1 issue.  Drowning in a bunch of stuff I could not really see clearly. Just like with Kanban-for-1, if I had to move a task, first I had to dig through the piles of tasks to figure out where it was.
Disclaimer: I should point out that if you are reading this hoping to get to a point where I realize I’m just carrying way too many tasks… you might want to get a sandwich… it’s gonna be a while.
Basically I’m looking for Things, but Kanban style (cough cough Cultured Code cough cough). Since I’ve started writing this blog people have been kind enough to send in a number of recommendations. Trello seems to be very popular. I’ve also received suggestions that I use Evernote for Kanban. I’d love to be able to do that, but I’ve not yet found a tool that would allow me to do so in as effortless a manner as I am looking for. Basically, if using the tool is more work than pulling an index card or a post it out of my pocket and capturing the item/updating the item while I am in an elevator, walking down the street, or sitting on a plane, it’s too much work. Unfortunately, none of the tools I was able to find met all my requirements. However, after looking over the options, I decided o give Leankit a try. My reasons for choosing it were not entirely scientific, but I’m human… Leankit allowed me to do the following:
The last point may seem trivial, but to me, it is very significant and one of the primary reasons that I have so much trouble with personal Kanban applications. The value of my physical board is that I can put everything I had to do up there at once. I can look at it all at once. It is a really big information radiator. For me, it’s a billboard telling me what is going on with the things I feel I need to do. No matter how awesome the software is, or how big my monitor is, there doesn’t seem to be a way to replicate the big thing on the wall + tactile interaction thing.
"Never get out of the boat... Unless you were goin all the way."
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