Your backlog is bigger than it should be and it needs to be managed. Everyday people tell us how they are overwhelmed by their backlog, and cannot possibly manage it within a Personal Kanban because it could contain hundreds or thousands of tasks.Let’s examine this.On Stephen Smith’s blog, he describes using Personal Kanban to visualize his workflow with his file-card system. Leslie Dewar left this comment:

I have tried this system of cards in the past and found it extremely distracting and demotivating. I was working with a very intensely personal client base of about 280 people and there were dozens of small jobs that probably really needed to be in a tickler file. If I put them all on a “Task” list, it was quite overwhelming, even though some of the work only needed ten or fifteen minutes.I also suffer from the “out of sight – out of mind” disability. I have gone through many office an office blitz; prioritised; put in folders; sequenced in desktop folders and ……. forgot about it. By the time I do all that organizing, I somehow felt as though I must have also done the job!

Leslie’s issues are not unique. I’m seeing two in particular here. The first is tracking tasks over time (tasks that aren’t relevant for a while clutter up your Personal Kanban and make it hard to read), and the second is Personal Portfolio Management.Tracking Tasks Over TimeThere are things we do every day that are repeating or scheduled out into the future. We need to remember these things and add them to the Personal Kanban when necessary. Products like Outlook or Google Calendar can help here. Simply place automated reminders (what GTD calls "ticklers") in your calendar at the earliest date you’ll need to be reminded of them. The due date isn’t going to help you - calls to action will. One of the biggest mistakes people make with calendars is that they record the date something will happen rather than recording the earliest date action will be necessary.Then forget about that thing until the tickler comes up.Personal Portfolio ManagementI have the feeling this is going to become a major theme for Personal Kanban. Everyone has multiple projects. Those projects have features and those actions have specific tasks. Defined:

Project – a large thing of value that needs to be done – Build Deck
Features – units of value that, when combined, create the project – Railings
Tasks – discrete actions that create features – cut 16 posts to 3’5”

We can use Personal Kanban to manage our work at all three levels. Depending on how many projects we have, a project can simply be denoted by the color of the sticky note. Features can be tracked on the Personal Kanban until we start in on the feature – then we can decide how best to break it down.If the Project is "Make Breakfast," that probably stands on its own. You won’t need the features (like Toast) or the Tasks (slice bread, place bread in toaster, depress toaster button, double check toast setting to make sure it’s on golden brown, stare at toaster for what seems like an eternity...).Part of what makes life challenging is that personal work does come in Projects like “Build House” and “Make Coffee.” Combined, these projects comprise our Personal Portfolio.Since one of the goals of Personal Kanban is to simplify your life – creating a huge, mandatory system of nested Personal Kanban or secondary tools doesn’t make sense (for everyone).So What Do I Do With This Wisdom?Understand that your body of work is a Portfolio. Your Personal Kanban goal is to manage that portfolio in the way that works best for you. If your Personal Kanban is overloaded with tasks, find ways to group them into Features or Projects until it comes time to actually do the work. If you have too many things in the future, remind yourself with an automated calendar.If you are like Leslie and have 208 clients, manage them in a Customer Relationship Management system. And, if you get to the point where you can’t manage your work at all – you are taking on too much. That’s the point where you go to Odesk and get an outsourced Personal Assistant. (And manage them with an on-line Personal Kanban!)Photo by Sea Turtle

Is there something you don’t know?Almost everyday it seems we are faced with having to learn something new. Some of those things are trivial and easy to accomplish, while others are important and a more than a little daunting to master.There are some easy steps to make learning less overwhelming.On the Lean Agile Machine blog, there have been two consecutive, thought-provoking posts on Personal Kanban and productivity. One describes how to set up a Personal Kanban for research and writing production. The second describes how to set up short bursts of research and quickly evaluate the results.

SPIKE
n. A short burst of work to create a sample version of something

In agile programming, savvy developers will quickly cobble together a prototype, something merely to demonstrate the idea is feasible. Spikes make sure that assumptions about selected technologies and implementation are sound.In short, a spike is a burst of work that makes sure that further work is warranted.Learning is a great way to do this because there will always be things we do not know. Every field of study has nuances and developments that even ardent devotees can’t keep up with. So, when we suddenly need to bone up on say, deck waterproofing methods, we really don’t want to have to become a master carpenter.So, you do a Spike.You set aside 15 to 25 minutes (perhaps with your Pomodoro timer) and blast through as much research as you can. You Google, you Wikipedia, you save some links, you find some review sites. At the end of your spike, you have one of three outcomes:

You have learned as much as you need;
You have a good idea where to get information and how much longer it will take; or
You have learned that asking an expert is a better idea.

Now learning is easy. The spike gives you a predictable amount of time to spend to get results that tame the learning beast.(Please do read the two posts from Lean Agile Machine.)Photo by Shavar Ross

Respect Your Backlog and Manage It

Boosting Productivity and Learning with Spikes