Personal Kanban using Google Calendar, LeanKit and Zapier

This is the second post in the series by Chris Hefley of LeanKit showing how to integrate tools many of us use everyday with our Personal Kanban. You can read the first post - Killing Email Interruptions: Personal Kanban using LeanKit, Gmail and Zapier here.

This time, we’ll look at how to integrate Google Calendar with LeanKit via Zapier.com. We’ll look at two different ways to use Google Calendar and LeanKit together.

Creating a Zap Trigger

Setting up GCal with LeanKit

Search Term for GCal Trigger

Creating a new card type in LeanKit

Matching GCal event to LeanKit

Adding Summary and Event Fields to LeanKIt Description Field

Creating an Event with LeanKit in the Event Title

Testing Zap

New LeanKit card on Personal Kanban board

Alternative way to add event cards to your board - Event Start Trigger

Setting up new trigger parameters

New Calendar Event Setup

Testing and naming the new Zap

New Event Card on the LeanKit board

First, let’s create a “Zap” based on the Google Calendar “New Event Search” trigger. This will allow to create a Google Calendar event and a corresponding LeanKit card at the same time.Zapier will prompt you to set up your Google Calendar account and you can use your already set-up LeanKit account.After setting up the accounts, set the Search Term for the Google Calendar trigger. I used “(LK)”. If I create an event with “(LK)” in the title, this integration will create a LeanKit card for that event. That way, I can easily control which events from my calendar get a card.Now, I want to create a new card type on my LeanKit board, for “Event”.Now that we’ve taken care of that, we can set up the target LeanKit board, lane, and card type.Use the “Summary” field from the list of fields available from Google Calendar for the LeanKit Card Title field.Not all my calendar appointments actually have a description. Since Description is a required field in the LeanKit integration, add the “Summary” and “Event Begins (Pretty)” fields to the LeanKit Description field, in addition to the Google Calendar Description field, as shown below:We’re nearly ready to test the integration. First, though, let’s go to Google Calendar and create an event with “(LK)” in the event title:Finally, test and name the Zap:And you should get a new LeanKit “Event” card on your personal kanban board:There’s one other way I’d like to integrate my Google Calendar with LeanKit. I’d like to create a new card on my LeanKit board one day before a scheduled event, instead of immediately when I first create the event. So, if I’m using my personal kanban board to keep track of things I have to do on a given day, I will get the next day’s events added the the board each day.For this integration, I’m going to use the “Event Start” trigger from Google Calendar.When setting up the trigger parameters, I chose 1 day, and used the Search Term “(LKF)” (for “LeanKit Future”). The Search Term is optional, if you want this trigger to fire for all events.For the LeanKit parameters, set them up the same as in the previous example, then create a new Google Calendar event. The event needs to be in the future, within 24 hours of the current time in order for our test to work. And I’ve added “(LKF”) to the event title:Test and name this Zap:...and we should now have a new Event card on our LeanKit board:There you go! Now you can create a card and event at the same time, or mark a calendar event to have a LeanKit card created in the future, when the event is 1 day away.

Killing Email Interruptions: Personal Kanban using LeanKit, Gmail, and Zapier

Quick intro from Jim Benson:

We've asked Chris Hefley from Leankit to write a series of posts showing how to integrate tools many of us use everyday with our Personal Kanban. These are fairly technical posts, but also very powerful ones.

In this first post, Chris mentions that his aim is to keep his inbox at zero by taking action items and moving them directly to his Personal Kanban. Tonianne and I have also noticed that we also tend to act on emails the moment they arrive. This means that we allow email to interrupt our flow of work - then we get to the end of the day and are disappointed by how we let those interruptions derail our day.

Chris lays out a simple mechanism to move emails into your Leankit Personal Kanban that can both clean out your inbox and give some of those interruptions their proper priority. Also, I've turned Chris' post into a video which is at the bottom.

Take it away, Chris

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I aspire to keep my inbox at zero. About once every couple of weeks, I actually get there. I’ve got several tools that I use to help me with that, including moving emails to my Personal Kanban board in LeanKit.

LeanKit has a connector available for Zapier, a cloud based integration hub. Zapier provides hundreds more connectors with other applications, which makes it very easy to connect LeanKit with Gmail, ZenDesk, BugZilla, BaseCamp, and many more.In this article, I’ll show you how to set up a “Zap” to create a LeanKit card based on an email in Gmail, complete with a link back to the original email, so that you can get that “to do” item onto your Kanban board and out of your inbox.First, you’ll need to go to Zapier.com and create an account. There’s a free account that should work just fine, and if you need more integrations or faster synchronization you can upgrade later.Once you’ve created your account, you’ll be asked to create your first “Zap”, and presented with the screen below:

Integrating Zapier with LeanKit

On the Trigger (left) side, choose Gmail, and choose “New Thread”.

Choosing Gmail and a New Thread

On the Action side (right side) choose LeanKit and “New-Add Card” for the action.So that when a new Thread is created in Gmail that fits the criteria we will add later, it will create a matching card in LeanKit.

Adding LeanKit

Follow the steps in Zapier to set up your Gmail account:

Selecting an Email Account

…and your LeanKit account.

Conecting LeanKit to Zapier

Now, in a separate browser tab, go into your gmail account, open an email, and create a Label called “lk” (or something similar) for that email. (Help for how to create a label in Gmail: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/118708?hl=en)

Back in Zapier, in the filter for your Gmail Trigger, choose the “lk” label you created in the previous step (it could take a few minutes for the label to show up after you’ve created it. If you don’t see it after a few minutes, try saving your “Zap” incomplete, and then coming back to this step.)

Choosing Triggers

In Zapier, Choose the LeanKit board you’d like to add cards to. This will allow you to select from any board in your LeanKit account (that you have access to with your login).

Choosing a LeanKit Board

After selecting the Board, you’ll be able to select the lane you want new cards added to, and the Card Type you want for your new cards.

Selecting the LeanKit Lane

For the Card Title field, add the Gmail fields  “From Name” and “Subject”, and add “Plain Message” to the description field.

You can also add “ThreadURL” to the Description field if you’re using Basic or Team edition to provide a link back to the email. Or follow the instructions further down to add the link to the card header if you’re using Portfolio edition.

Selecting Card Fields

Test it like so:

Test Your Setup

Testing Your Setup 2

If you’re using LeanKit Portfolio Edition, you can use the “External Card ID” field. Add “ThreadID” to this field from the list of available Gmail fields.

Using the External Card ID Field

Open your LeanKit board in a new browser tab, and in the settings for your leankit board, enable Card ID, and set it up as shown below. The field is where the Gmail ThreadID will go.  (Check the gmail message url by opening an email in your browser and confirming the format of the url shown below for the email).

Enabling LeanKit Card ID

Now, the link to the original thread will appear in the header of the card, allowing you to quickly jump back there without opening the card to view the description.

Links on the LeanKit Task Cards

That should do it. You can test the Zap and turn it on in Zapier. Now, all you have to do is label a message in Gmail with “lk” and then archive it to get it out of your inbox. The next time the Zapier sync process runs, it will pick up that email and create a LeanKit card for it.

Awareness: Why Limit WIP VIII

Whether you call it Buddhism or another religion, self-discipline,that's important. Self-discipline with awareness of consequences. ~ Dalai Lama

below the water line

Self-discipline with the awareness of consequences.When we become self-aware, we shed learned helplessness. The inability to act is replaced by the polar opposite – a desire to act.We have seen the repeated with teams that previously had given up. A corporate culture of failure acceptance is created and is so pervasive that people say, “continuous improvement is impossible in my culture.”What we’ve seen, however, is quite different. People that have been in a low-trust, punitive environment where action is shunned do develop learned helpless and they do shut down, BUT … they create pent-up demand for change. They may have learned that they can’t help now, but they’re STILL THERE.So Eldred is still there, even though he was beaten down by years of five projects. Eldred is still there.For years, Eldred has had to keep only the self-discipline of not going insane being pulled in so many directions. The structure of the company limited his ability to have the self-discipline of good product development and completion. Eldred never had to be aware of consequences. Other than internal political ones, he was sheltered.Now, Eldred is a little scared. He recognizes that now Team B is on the hook for completing a product. A real product. To be really released to real buyers. And, not only that, he recognizes that Markus Blume isn’t going to tell him, or his project manager, what to do.Eldred is also aware that no one got laid off. There was so much work not being done that the staffing still seems insufficient even for just these two projects. How is that possible?Eldred is becoming aware.Eldred sees that he could suggest working groups to get out features faster. It might work. He’s always wanted to try it, but never could because even he couldn’t commit to it. It’s an experiment, but … it just might work.

Don’t Be the Costa Concord

When teams become aware, they tend to want to make decisions.Risk-averse people (management and workers alike) tend to fear this shift because it means that decisions are made by people not in authority. The issue here is that we’ve had this pendulum so well stuck at the other end of the spectrum that no one can make decisions at all.  Small, daily course corrections for projects and the company should not require edicts from the highest of authorities.The rule of thumb that we’ve used is something called the water line.If you are about to make a decision, ask yourself, is this fails does it poke a hole in our corporate ship above or below the water line?If it’s above – we just say, “ooops,” we patch it and we move on.If it’s below – we should have a conversation or set of conversations with those in command of the ship so they can either say, “Um, let’s not do that” or “Okay, let’s do it and we’ll prepare if something goes wrong.”And yes, that’s vague.In general, there are going to be three water-line zones.Obviously safe, obviously dangerous, and that annoying transition band in-between.As the work force is transitioning to becoming more fully aware of their actions and their potential consequences, you might have a transgression or two. However, we’ve never seen a ship sunk because of awareness.What is more likely is that ships no awareness end up like the Exxon Valdez.

Eldred’s Unexpected Bonus

Limiting WIP for Eldred and Team B has led to a keener understanding of their product. They have been able to focus, as they are each only working on a very few tasks at a time. Extremely limited context switching has raised the productivity of the group. Increased project coherence has made them much more effective (they know what they are building and why).Greater awareness is creating an efficient operation. They can see inefficiencies, they have more time to talk to customers, and they have a shared understanding for the product itself. This is post 8 in a 10 part series on Why Limit Your WIP.  Read post 9 Communication: Why Limit Your WIP IX in the Why Limit Your WIP series.  Also, see the index for a list of all of them.

5s in Personal Kanban

Introduction

Personal Kanban is a great tool to visualize your work, to limit your WIP and to take better control of your life, either alone or together with your significant other, your kids or even your team at the office. In contrast to industrial Kanban, in Personal Kanban, the items contained in the value stream are often less defined and more often than not even the outcome is not clear. A "go shopping for dinner" task might be clear enough but you could as well end up checking the shelves in the supermarket and decide you prefer to get a Chinese takeaway instead.Nevertheless, if you have a Personal Kanban in place, customized to your own wishes and needs, suited for the way you like to work, things might or might not improve. After all, Kanban is only a tool, a method, and you still have to find the motivation inside you to make proper use of it. If you are so inclined, a simple Japanese philosophy might help you with this task.

5S

Like Lean and Kanban, 5S comes from Japan and is regarded as one of the fundaments for what literature named "Just-In-Time" production. It basically is a set of steps that streamline the way people work, eliminate waste and inefficiencies and help in reducing variation in the process. Of course, your daily schedule is not such a process but the basic idea of these five steps is still helpful. If you pay attention to them, your Personal Kanban will prove fruitful for you and you will reap the benefits. If you are reading this, chances are high that you already are, without knowing it.

Step 1 - Seiri

Seiri means as much as cleaning, throwing your junk away, and in a certain way, this is what you need to do when implementing your Personal Kanban. If you have used (or still use) different ways of keeping track of your tasks, get rid of them. No scribbles next to your keyboard, no sticky notes next to your phone, no random reminders in your mobile phone. Do a spring clean, if it's a task, put it in your Personal Kanban (the backlog, if it's for later on), if it's useless information, dump it. Make sure that there is only one place for you that contains all the information you need.

Step 2 - Seiton

Seiton means to bring things in order so you can use your Personal Kanban efficiently. It doesn't matter if you are using a big whiteboard, a table or your office door but whatever you use, you should have everything you need accessible. Stock up on post-it notes in different colours, have pens at hand, maybe even a filer so you can store your finished tasks for later. Whatever it is, you should not have to search for it when you want to work with your Personal Kanban, and the tools should neither be far away nor in an uncomfortable position. A corner in your room for example is a bad idea, as I guarantee that you'll lose your motivation if you constantly have to bend down to get a new post-it note.

Step 3 - Seiso

Seiso means to clean things or to shine them. This does not only mean that you should regularly take a cloth and scrub your whiteboard, if you have one, as noone likes dirt and dust. The bigger part of this means that you should keep your Personal Kanban tidy and in good shape. At the end of your workday, take a look at it, and ask yourself whether it is still a representation of your work. If tasks have become obsolete, then mark them as done. If you like to make notes to your tasks for later retrospectives, then now it's the time to do so. Rearrange what's left, reorder, make it look good. These minutes are not a lot of effort but if you start the next morning with a clean and up-to-date Kanban, you will feel better than if you had to start your day with cleaning things up first.

Step 4 - Seiketsu

Seiketsu is the task of standardizing things. Define for yourself a method for your Personal Kanban, and stick to it. If you use different colours or shapes for different kinds of things then be consistent with it. If you usually categorize doing your dishes as house chore, don't suddenly use a different category just because you couldn't find a post-it of the correct colour at hand. If you like to add deadlines to task items, make sure that each task with a deadline is marked accordingly. You want to be able to rely on the information your Personal Kanban gives you to make your decisions.

Step 5 - Shitsuke

Shitsuke means to sustain things and to be disciplined. Pay attention to the four steps above regularly. Use your Personal Kanban. Keep things clean and tidy, stick with the system you defined for yourself, restock on tools and whatever you need. And, above all: commit to what you are trying to achieve. Without discipline, your method will deteriorate over time and you'll gradually fall back into your way you worked before you introduced Personal Kanban. With discipline you will not only maintain but also over time improve your flow (through Kaizen), and you will have more often successful days when you see what you've done.

Conclusion

Most likely, all of the five steps mentioned above will sound obvious to you. For me, personally, they have formed a ritual and a mindset that help me maintain order and stability in my Personal Kanban, which leads to clarity and allow me to make the right decisions.

Am I Productive, Efficient, or Effective?

Productivity: having the power to produceEfficiency: the ratio of the output to the input of any systemEffectiveness: being able to bring about a desired result

Personal Kanban is considered a Productivity tool, because it gives us the power to produce more.  It is likewise said to increase Efficiency by limiting WIP and increasing focus which means we expend less energy to affect results. This in turn boosts our Effectiveness by providing the information necessary to make better decisions and act on them.Often people have bursts of productivity, efficiency, or effectiveness – but because they aren’t paying attention to what they're doing, these events are sometimes dismissed as happy accidents. Personal Kanban makes your work explicit, meaning it constantly shows you what you are doing and what you could be doing. This helps you interpret your options and prioritize you tasks based on current conditions. Personal Kanban also lets us balance productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness, and turn them into three parts of the same machine.Individually, bursts look like this:

• Bursts of productivity – You get a lot done, but is it the right stuff?

• Bursts of efficiency – Work is easily done, but is it focused for maximum effect?

• Bursts of effectiveness – The right work is done at the right time … this time. Is this process repeatable?

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I call these bursts “hero” events. Over time, things get screwed up and you have to call in a “hero” to fix them quickly. That hero may be you, a temp worker, a consultant, or a friend. But you identify a need so late in the game that you need to work above and beyond to complete the task at hand.What’s funny is that after these hero events, we feel good. And because we feel good, we think, “That was awesome!” and we ascribe the event to something exceptional. Something that just couldn’t possibly happen every day.During a recent project in Washington, D.C., I worked alongside members of the Intelligence Community. More than one of them told me that people in the IC  who allegedly had cushy desk jobs inside the Beltway, routinely volunteered for live fire assignments.These people specifically volunteered to be in harm’s way.Why? Because it was a period of sustained productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness. People did not have the "luxury" to relentlessly and constantly prioritize. In the field there is no choice but to constantly re-evaluate conditions and re-prioritize actions. Because picking the most important task was the only way to survive, the only way to complete the mission.There was a mission. There was survival. And those two conjoined drivers created a great deal of focus.Hopefully we don't have to risk our lives simply to focus on our work. Personal Kanban provides the structure to allow us to choose the right work for maximum effect repeatably.For more on how to choose the "right" work, and then how to make sure your processes are repeatable see Prioritization and Retrospectives.Photo by Randy Son of Robert.