Multiple Projects & Threaded WIP: Using The Big Picture for Personal Kanban

The two rules of Personal Kanban: Limit WIP and visualize your work.The truth about personal work: it’s messy.So people with messy work have been asking me for:

• ways to create multiple Personal Kanban(s) with unique workflows,

  1. ways to manage the WIP of multiple projects in one kanban,

  2. ways to manage projects with different collaborators, and

  3. better ways to integrate a calendar.

To be sure, these are not easy requests to satisfy.For all of my projects, I have been using Agile Zen as my primary Personal Kanban tool. I have found it to be the best designed, easiest to use, and most powerful online tool available. It likewise gives me the statistics I need to help me understand the "way" that I work, which ultimately helps me to make better informed decisions.Unfortunately however, it doesn’t lend itself to the aforementioned demands, because those demands break some pretty fundamental laws of Lean.  Such demands ask us to:

• abandon a central workflow (by integrating multiple workflows),

• acknowledge a time-box constraint (by introducing a calendar), and

• decouple WIP from a team and relegate it to the individual.

JimBenson_01 Nov. 13 20.13

So in an attempt to manage multiple projects, I've begun to use  The Big Picture. It isn’t perfect, but with its unique interface this free tool gets us a little closer to handling "the messy" than any other online tool I've come across.

Multiple Projects

JimBenson_03 Nov. 13 20.14

JimBenson_04 Nov. 13 20.15

JimBenson_05 Nov. 13 20.16

Pictured to the right is the main page from my Big Picture. We see that I have four simultaneous projects that are contributing to my WIP: Instant Karma, Modus, Music, and Personal.Each of these projects has its own workflow, set of collaborators, and type of demands. If we double click on one of the balls we get to see the kanban for that particular project.In this first example, we see that music can go from:idea --> in progress --> mix down --> review --> publicationTasks might also have subtasks or elements to be satisfied.  For example, the song “Presence of Mind” is in review and is awaiting feedback from John, Tonianne, and Chris.For the Instant Karma workflow, we see something very different -  a totally different workflow and totally different types of tasks.This system is inherently flexible.

Multiple WIP and Calendar Integration

JimBenson_06 Nov. 13 20.16

JimBenson_07 Nov. 13 20.21

This system manages WIP by actually moving current WIP into the calendar.In the image to the right, I’m dragging a task from one of the task lists to the calendar in the upper right corner.  This brings up the calendar screen where you can begin to manage your day – your messy day filled with multiple tasks from multiple projects with different workflows and different teams.Color coordinated by the various projects, the day now is filled with tasks.  This is your WIP.  You can move it from day to day until it is complete. When it is complete, you simply check the tick box.You can rearrange them. The time really isn’t important but rather, it’s the activities during the day which are vital.  This is your shared WIP column.At the beginning of the next work day, you can revisit each of the projects, pull the appropriate tasks from one stage to the next, and then select the WIP for that day.

Multiple Users

The Big Picture allows you to share individual projects with other users. They can add tasks, complete them, and change the workflow.This means that people see only the tasks you want them to see, and can work tightly with their teams.

What This is Missing (Blessing and Curse)

This is missing performance metrics, detailed backlog tracking, user management, and firm definitions of what is a task, what is a project, and what is a point in your workflow.  The Big Picture offers almost no firm definitions, it simply allows you to create an arbitrary container and place things inside it.What this means is that it won’t give you some of the high-end features you want – but it also means that this simple system can help visualize some of the most complicated workflows.  Additionally, it means you need nearly zero time to set up your management system, and that you can be part of a plethora of projects and still manage them coherently with the other people participating.

What This Has

In addition to its flexibility, this system also has a completely unique interface. It’s both colorful and functional, making the user experience enjoyable. I believe this is an excellent launching pad for experimentation and innovation.Will it replace Agile Zen for me personally? No. I need the metrics, the serious database, and the superlative UI design that Agile Zen gives me.Can I see myself using The Big Picture for quick projects or projects with weird workflows, like recursive or multi-variant workflows?  Absolutely. The utter free-form of The Big Picture makes it too attractive an alternative when the bizarre raises its head.

GTD & Kanban: Managing The Relationship Between Someday/Maybe & Active Projects

Throw out the schedule

In my previous post, "GTD & Kanban: Similarities, Differences & Synergies Between The Two"in this series,I talked about using Kanban for managing the flow of work, rather than having any number of projects and someday/maybe items in separate lists which are reviewed every week to a month.  In this post I will describe how using flow to manage GTD projects and someday/maybe lists can be beneficial.  In a future post I'll describe how this also translates into flowing actions in a context, such as the work place, and limiting the work in progress (WIP) of these actions.Again, for the basics of GTD I recommend the material linked from Wikipedia.  The basics of Personal Kanban can be found on this very site.

What are "Someday/Maybe" lists and Projects?

Getting things Done (GTD) has a number of horizons above any given action: Projects, Goals, Focus, Vision & Purpose.  These are aimed at providing yourself goals to aim for and to test your choice of actions against, so that you aren't just "doing", but are actually moving toward a goal, and these goals join up to achieving larger objectives in life.In GTD, anything you wish to achieve that has more than one specific  action is considered a project.  For example, even arranging a meal out at a restraunt could be considered a project as you will have to go through actions similar to: who to invite, confirm who is available, when to go, where to go, book a table, confirm booking with invitees and go.  The reason why this definition works is, actions could be in any number of places in your personal productivity system, be it a calendar or a list, and when they are done there needs to be a reminder in your system that acts as a touchstone so that you can ensure a next action is available to move forward towards an envisaged successful outcome.Any objective that requires action, yet does not make sense to undertake as-at-now, yet you feel this is something you would like to do in the future is considered a candidate for the "someday/maybe" list.  Someday/maybe is reviewed at regular intervals to see if an item needs pulling into the current project list, or, if only one action is required, a contextual action list or placed on a calendar.  Why have a someday/maybe list?  Someday/maybe lists assist in clearing your head by placing all these wishes and thoughts into a trusted and regularly reviewed system.

Managing Someday/Maybe & Projects by using a Personal Kanban

Rather than have multiple flat lists, one for projects and one for someday/maybe with no interaction between them other than once a week if not longer, lets use a Kanban to represent both!  The example bellow includes prioritisation, a step for the initial brainstorm of what success looks like and what actions may be required, the doing part (working), and the done part.  All with WIP limits for focus.

Lets do a quick illustration:

1. You get a new project at work called "Project A" that is going to require several actions, so you place it on the backlog as you have plenty to do already.  The backlog acts as your someday/maybe list.

2. A space becomes available on your "Should" lane, which prompts you to look at your backlog for possible projects to start prioritising, you assess the items against your current Goals at work, and select Project A.

3. Over time, Project A moves from "Should" to "Ready", and before undertaking the work, to the elaboration lane for envisaging a successful outcome and working back to the next steps from where you are.

4. Once Project A moves to the "Working" lane, you place the next action discovered as part of elaborating into the appropriate context list or date on the calendar.

5. Actions get performed overtime, and eventually the successful outcome is achieved and Project A is placed in the "Project Goal Achieved!" lane.

Clearly, due to the variance in size of knowledge work or personal projects it's difficult to set a limit on "working", so I suggest you experiment with this number, and try to keep it as low as possible for focus.Going back to the purpose of someday/maybe, it is possible you have single discreet actions on your backlog now, so it is worth moving those items to an appropriate context list or calendar entry when the time comes that you wish to do something about them.  Personally, most of my Someday/Maybe items were and are projects, so I don't mind the backlog being closely associated to projects.

The "Man, That Was Awful" Approach to Personal Kanban

Kanban is meant to be epiphany heavy, but process light. These approaches are meant to provide simple means to visualize how your work actually flows. Some tasks are going to be horrible. They are going to take longer than you expect, be harder to complete than anticipated, or even just really annoy you.In life, you want to do things that make you happy and not do things that don't. So why not start noticing what you don't like to do or what takes you away from doing the things you like?The MAN THAT WAS AWFUL approach is simple. When you finish a task and it was in anyway unpleasant - set it aside. Then, later, take a look at the tasks that were unpleasant and look for patterns. Were the people involved the same? Was it a resource issue? Do you just hate doing those kinds of things?After you see the patterns you can make choices like:

• when to delegate

• when to refuse work

• what processes you might want to recreate

• if you want a new career

• to cry

Again, the point here is to make what you are doing explicit. Hopefully bad things will initially fall into some patterns that you can consider and reshape. Awful tasks should become less and less common as you can spot them coming and learn ways to deflect them.Photo by _Boris

GTD & Kanban: Similarities, Differences & Synergies Between The Two

flower_bee

In this article in the "GTD & Personal Kanban Series" we will explore the why? behind bringing GTD & Personal Kanban together.

What is Getting Things Done (GTD)?

GTD emerged as a highly effective and popular personal productivity approach in the early two thousands. The approach consists of a five stage process, a workflow to guide that process and a couple of techniques for handling choice around what to do at any given moment, what should be progressed as soon as possible or someday/maybe, and also, how to handle life and work's various horizons - from now at this moment, all the way through to what is important to you in life as a whole. 

This article isn't a '101' on GTD, for that there are plenty of resources available, which are linked to here. On a personal note, I find that GTD frees my mind enabling me to focus totally on the tasks at hand, and also represents a concrete approach to help achieve Stephen Covey's first three habits of his famous: The Seven Habits of highly Effective People.

What is Kanban?

This whole site is about Kanban in the context of solving personal and group problems around the home and workplace,  for a great 101 head over to here.Kanban has allowed me to increase the throughput of things getting done.SimilaritiesThough targeted at different problems, there are similarities between Kanban & GTD.

• The breaking down of "stuff" into discrete items to be processed - With GTD this happens as part of taking each item from the physical and/or electronic inboxes and asking if it is actionable, and if so, what is the next physical action.  With Kanban, we create stories which form the Kanbans themselves, to then be placed on a backlog.

• Inboxes & Backlogs - These are both areas where potential work is collected, and represents the start of either a GTD process with inboxes, or a Kanban process with backlogs.  The similarity here will differ based on context, and it's fair to say that with a backlog, some initial processing of the material onto the backlog may have taken place.  With GTD, raw material is added to the physical or electronic inboxes.

• Lists, lists & more lists - Both GTD & Kanban utilise lists.  In GTD's case it can take any form as the process is not prescriptive in it's concrete implementation.  In Kanban's case, there are lists, though they are split into dimensions, such as stage/state/work station the story is at, and there is additional process related information, like WIP limits and checklists.

• Contexts - Kanban & GTD are very flexible in their applications.  Both can be shaped to fit various situations.  For example, manufacturing cars, or managing your reading list in the case of Kanban.  GTD can have a "context list" for pretty much anything you can imagine, from a specific location to a situation you find yourself in, where certain work makes sense.

• With both GTD & Kanban granularity is important - For GTD, it's not about writing lists of goals: "buy milk", "fill in tax return", but rather, GTD is concerned with determining the next action required and given the right context or time, just performing that action without having to constantly figure out the next step each time.  In Kanban's case, it favours work items that are discrete, unambiguous and ideally of a similar "size" to reduce variance.

• Support for levels of granularity - Kanban can achieve this with a kind of nesting of Kanbans and horizontal swim-lanes.  Or, multiple Kanbans, one representing a higher level of granularity than the other, whereby the items in the "Kanban in the large" are related to those being processed in the "Kanban in the small".  I use an approach like this with my current projects and their related current actions being processed.  GTD achieves multiple levels of granularity with lists.  There is: purpose, vision, goals, focus, projects and plenty of contexts, for example "At work" & "At home".

• Addressing Waste - Kanban addresses waste explicitly as does GTD.  Kanban using WIP limiting and "stop the line" techniques with a general attitude of continuous improvement.  GTD insists that any piece of "stuff" that enters your world should be processed once and once only, by using techniques like a 'Zero Inbox' policy and the 'Two-Minute Rule'.

• Pull - At the most abstract level, both approaches exist to process work to fulfill a demand.  Both approaches pull work through a process to achieve the goal of getting valuable stuff done.

This is encouraging, it would appear that we have a lot to work with in terms of bringing these ideas together.

Differences between GTD and Kanban

There are obvious differences in the two approaches, given they are aimed at different problems. However, I find little that is polarised or in conflict but rather the differences are complementary in enhancing areas of non-existence or weakness in the other, when applied to personal productivity.

• Reduced backlog size versus a clear head - Kanban comes from the world of Lean Manufacturing, where the Theory of Constraints philosophy is pervasive.  Large backlogs are considered to be wasteful as the cost of maintaining them and the friction they cause impacts the value that will be generated. A backlog that is sized so that it is processed rapidly and renewed with new stories regularly is considered ideal.  GTD is different to this, there are no caps, implied or artificial.  GTD encourages a clear head, to reduce stress and allow complete focus on the task at hand.  Obviously, there is a conflict there on face value.  In the past I had GTD action lists with hundreds of action items on them, and project and someday/maybe lists with 10s of items.

• Kanban allows for Work In Progress (WIP) limiting -  GTD doesn't explicitly try to limit that which is being worked on in any hard manner, rather a softer approach which asks if something is relevant against focus, goals, vision, purpose or just plain want to do it now.  Sadly, GTD can lead to thrashing, when the total number of options for doing is enormous.  Kanban is all about focus, and if used well can seriously reduce the chance, let alone the act of context switching.

• Visual control - Although I'm sure there are ways this could be addressed currently, as a whole, most GTD implementations seem to be light on visualisation of WIP.  Kanban is all about visualisation.

• Process definition - GTD has a definite default process, which is not prescriptive in so far it's not all or nothing.  Kanban doesn't define a default, but rather provides tools to be used in a greater or lesser extent to get the right result in a context.

• Prioritisation - In GTD there is no prioritisation as such.  By virtue of the fact something is actionable, it will either appear in a context action list, calendar, waiting for (delegation) or may appear project list.  With Kanban there are  all kinds of ways priorities can be defined.

• Time critical actions - Kanban is about flow, so specific times and dates aren't catered for.  GTD does use calendars and possibly tickle files to cater for those things that do need attending to at a specific time and date.

I am certain there are more differences here, so please do highlight any to better our understanding.

Synergise

Lots of similarities and lots of differences, generally of a non-conflicting nature. The question is, where can we benefit from bringing these powerful approaches together?  Lets see...Kanban can help GTD a lot! The problem I have had with GTD is flow, thrashing and WIP limiting at all stages in particular contexts, especially the backlog.  I know there is waste there, given the number of times I have conducted a review and found:

• It takes ages because of the size of the backlog.

• I find out-of-date actions/projects, again due to the size of the backlog.

• Feel like i should be getting some of the value of the review just by doing, instead of waiting for the end of the week review.

• I have also struggled with pulling projects from the someday/maybe into current projects lists.

GTD can help Kanban in a personal productivity context by:

• Providing a way for people to clear their heads to focus on what is at hand.

• Excellent techniques for identifying what should be done or not.

• Doing actions not goals, by forcing the right questions at the beginning of processing "stuff", instead of constantly asking what do I need to with this?

• Handle work that needs to be on the calendar and most importantly some simple rules to motivate doing!  The Two Minute Rule being a great example.

• Delegation.

• Levels of focus in life and work.  Kanban doesn't address what it is you are flowing toward.

Over the coming posts in this series I will try to illustrate the above synergies with examples.  Again, please do comment, I'm keen to explore this more myself.

Personal Kanban: Tangible Tasks Produce Prioritization

Planning and prioritizing is a wicked problem that has plagued humankind since time immemorial. – Corey Ladas

image

image

image

Human beings want three things in life: sex, money and effective prioritization.There appears to be a logical and linear three-stage process of better prioritization as you become familiar with kanban. The process follows the three main characteristics of the cardwall and how they insidiously work their way into your psyche.Stage One: The VisualSimply viewing the tasks on the kanban cardwall makes them conspicuous. The tasks on the card wall have a shape or a volume. They consume space on your board and you can only fit so many on at a time.  Your brain sees this and suddenly, perhaps for the first time, your workload has a coherent form.  It may be overwhelming, but you can now see it.A necessary drive for prioritization stems from this physical form.  You want to only fit tasks in that finite space that are going to do the most for you. At this point, you’re most likely to do this by sight, as you complete one task you’ll grab the next one that “looks best”. Let’s call this immediate gratification prioritization.  It’s better than letting fate guide you and an excellent start.Stage Two: The PermanentThe cardwall is on the wall and it is permanent. You don’t put it in a box at night. You don’t hide it when the boss stops by. The cardwall is your professional superego. It is reminding you of what you are doing, why it benefits society, and what will happen to you if you don’t finish. If you have colleagues, they can see what you are doing. if your personal kanban is shared they may even have a stake in your task completion. In this case, you may want to start having some logical prioritization that might resemble Corey’s Priority Filter.  Corey’s Priority Filter creates “buckets” with limited capacity that show tasks trickling down from your backlog into your ready-queue.  Here, you are starting to plan for future prioritization. At any time, you can rearrange things, but the priority filter lets you set up a prioritization that shares the same permanence as the kanban itself. Each part of the ready-queue Let’s call this progressive filtration.Stage Three: The TactileThe cardwall is tactile. You have to reach up and grab something and move it around. As it moves, it has a flow. You begin to see how you collect, collaborate on, and complete different kinds of tasks. Even in the most chaotic of situations, there are rhythms to types of work. What is happening now? You are constantly doing work and therefore constantly physically interacting with the board. At this point, prioritization itself begins to get a flow. You recognize that as tasks enter your backlog, some will seem more important on some days that others. Some have higher value to the team than others.Corey and Eric Willeke asynchronously put their heads together and came up with Perpetual Multivote. This process recognizes that good decision making has both temporal and social components. As context changes over time for people, what seems important also changes. Perpetual multivote places backlog items on a visual board. Voters get a certain number of tokens and can vote any time and as much they want for the upcoming backlog items until they run out of tokens. They can reallocate their tokens whenever they want as well. They see how their peers vote and can make their decisions based on that context. In the picture above each line is a backlog item and each dot is a vote from a team member.Perpetual multivote clearly represents the tactile nature of the cardwall.  It might be called contextual prioritization.Do You See What’s Happening Here?Right now some of the most popular games for portable platforms like the Nintendo DS are games like Brain Age that help you train your brain. They’re like the antidote for cage fighting. These games work not so much by teaching you math or algebra, but by getting your brain to react to certain stimuli that promote attentiveness, appropriate response and retention.Your brain can learn to think “better” simply by being sensitized to the actions of better thinking.Kanban does this as well by creating a physical space (the cardwall) in which these concepts (tasks) can live - where the human brain can grasp and manipulate them better. As people, we learn in different ways. Some of us are visual learners, others are auditory, some contextual, some literal…. Vive la différence, sure – but for those who have tried to manage la différence … history is filled with managerial pain and anguish.Cardwalls tend to equalize varying learning styles by presenting information with a logical flow and cadence. Everyone from your scattered ADHDer to your hyperfocused Asperberger can grasp a kanban – because it does have elements of context for all learning styles.Like Brain Age, kanban starts to train our brains to see work in a new way. Not as an unfocused pile of tasks and subtasks and subsubtasks, but as a set of tasks with very real impacts on our lives. As we begin to see the form and flow of these tasks, our abilities to prioritize can improve.This is post four in my personal kanban series.Kanban examples built in AgileZen, review coming soon.Multivote image from Corey’s Multivote blog post. (why mess with perfection?)