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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.

Limiting Holiday WIP with Personal Kanban

derek's pk 2

I’m asked on a regular basis how Agile or Lean practices can be applied during the holidays. Let’s face it, we have a limited amount of time and todo lists as long as our arms. Truth be told, people have limited success using the ever-growing todo list. You either forget your list at home, you take on too much at one time, or you forget why some of the items on your list just aren’t getting done.

Several years ago, I found the answer to my “get stuff done” problem and it is known as Personal Kanban. "Personal Kanban borrows from several Lean principles and practices. With just two simple acts – visualizing work and limiting work in progress – Personal Kanban gives us clarity over our work and our goals, and the unprecedented ability to deal with distractions, manage expectations, make better decisions, and ultimately find a healthy balance between our professional, personal, and social lives." – See more

Using Personal Kanban

I’ve leveraged Kanban for Agile Teams with great success. But I used a physical board, complete with sticky notes and painters tape. I also had a small board in my office, for personal stuff. Unfortunately, the more I traveled for work, the less physical boards worked.

I always seem to have my laptop or phone with me but I didn’t always have a wall to apply sticky notes. What is an Agile coach to do? Of course, in this digital age, there are several inexpensive solutions. I use LeanKit. It works on the web, phones, and tablets. Everything is synced all the time.

There are other solutions out there but this has worked for me (and my family) for quite a while.Here is the 50,000 foot view of how it works. On a surface that is in plain view all the time, visualize your workflow. It could be as simple as To Do, WIP (work in process), and Done.

Being this is personal, label the columns anything you want. Identify what you need to get done on cards. I like the title to be actionable (Call, Find, Do, Finish, Get…). I then color code the cards so I know if it is for work or not. Let’s say you are traveling during the holidays: “Pack clothes, book hotel room, reserve rental car, get boarding pass”. Use specific card colors and you’ll know at a glance if you forgot to do something.

Limit the stuff you work on at any given time. If you haven’t discovered it yet, multitasking is a big lie. You don’t get more done! You just keep really busy. Focus on getting stuff done, not starting more stuff. Don’t exceed WIP limits in a column. If there is no room for a card in a column without exceeding a self-imposed WIP limit, you do not pull a card into the column! This is important. By limiting what we agree to start, we will in turn finish a lot more.

Personal KanbanKanban Cards

Here are the cards for my “Holiday” Personal Kanban. My board doesn’t go away after January 1. It just focuses on other stuff. The yellow cards are going to drop off after New Years. I left them on the board so you could see how we can have three groups on a board and it still have clarity. Colors of cards are optional. I use every visual queue I can, including blocked and high priority indicators.

Red cards – Christmas and my birthday

Orange cards – LeadingAgile (work)

Yellow cards – ChanukahReady

I keep a backlog of stuff that isn’t “ready” for me to work on so I don’t even include those on my board. Even after having the highest priority cards appear at the top of the board, having too many cards on your board can paralyze you with choices. I only add cards to my ready column, if they have limited dependencies and are ready to complete within the next few weeks.

WIP (Work in Process)

One of the secrets of a pull system is you only work on things you actually have capacity to work on. When you have capacity in the next step of your workflow, you can pull work into that step. Limit the amount of stuff that you’re working on at any given time and I can pretty much guarantee you’ll get more done.

Personally, I know that I can only deal with three things at a time before things start to get dropped. Know your personal limits and set them accordingly. If you’re working on something and you get blocked, don’t pull in more work.

Add a visual indicator that indicates the item is blocked. and continue pulling working through to done. Once you unblock the work, you can pull it the rest of the way through your system.

Focus

I’m a strange combination of a little OCD, a little ADHD, a lot of grit, and a lot of drive. I need a focus column. If I walk away from my desk, read an email, or get a cup of coffee, I can pretty much guaranteed to forget what I was working on. The focus column is my visual reminder of that one thing I’m trying to focus on right now. Notice the image of my personal kanban above that I’m trying to wrap up this blog post. Everything else can wait. I need to get this done!

Done

Ah yes, the done column. It is where all work needs to go. When I look at it, it makes me feel pretty darn good. We all feel busy but we commonly ask ourselves if we’ve actually gotten anything done. Well, this will show you. I recommend you reflect on what you’ve accomplished, feel good about it, and clear the column on a periodic basis. I do it either once a week or every other week.

Summary

I know this is a lot to put into a single blog post. But if you’re wishing for a more productive and balanced 2014, I would recommend you give this a try. It’s super simple to start and over time, if you’re persistent, you’ll see it will bring more clarity to your work and your goals.If you want to learn more about Personal Kanban, I would recommend you read Personal Kanban by Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria Barry. It’s a great read and an awesome gift!

Kidzban Around the Web #3

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Around the web people are sharing their experiences with Kidzban.  This is the third post in the series – Kidzban Around the Web.Maritza van den Heuvel writes from her Becoming an Agile Family Blog. She has written many posts on her experiences with both kidzban and Personal Kanban.  In her All Aboard post she describes "that there is no 'one size fits all' approach."She has used a kidzban right from her dining table.  She states "The most visible item in our open plan living area is the dining table."She has also used the fridge.  Maritza mentioned in her post "By the next weekend, I’d realised that the object which is most central to our lives is in fact the kitchen fridge. It’s the first thing you see as you walk into the kitchen, and all of us open it at least once in the morning, afternoon and evening. It also came with a ready-made metal surface and a myriad of magnets we could use for our cards."Maritza loves the fridge because "The further beauty of the fridge, is that it has natural boundaries that separate the Backlog (below the line) and Work In Progress (above the line). Work again moves across from the left (Next Up) to the middle (Doing) and eventually to the right (Done)."She even has a portable Kanban that she made out of a folder and pasted a poster board to. "So far, the mobile board has been my biggest breakthrough in personal productivity using Personal Kanban."Maritza has created truly innovative kidzbans with her family.  Her Teaching Kids Timekeeping with Kanban is one example.  She states "I had been toying with the idea of a non-linear kanban for over a year."  Her kids loved Harry Potter and "were already familiar with the concept of a clock that 'shows where you are' made the format of the clock a no-brainer."

Weasley Kidzban Clock

Maritza mentions how easy it was to involve her children in creating the kidzban while making it fun. "All you have to do is look around at what you have and use it creatively while involving the kids throughout. We made the clock in an afternoon, with an extra day for the choosing and printing of the photos."  The face was created by using the previous year's cardboard calendar.  Her kids colored the segments, and she wrote the activity names on poster board and her kids cut them out.  They are removable so that they can change easily if activities change or the time changes for activities and her kids chose their own photos to use on the arms of the clock.After using the clock for around a month Maritza concluded, "The kids are certainly having a lot of fun with it so far."  They placed the kanban "strategically" in a highly visual place - at the bottom of their stairs.  "....they have to pass it every time they go up or down. We now also have a new mantra to Check and Change....(the Weasley Clock)."  She also stated her kids are starting to form the habit of changing positions of their avatars and they are enjoying comparing each other's status.Be sure to stop by Maritza's Becoming an Agile Family Blog to read the All Aboard post and Teaching Kids Timekeeping with Kanban post in their entirety. Maritza is also one of the authors of the book Beyond Agile: Tales of Continuous Improvement.Photo 1: CreditPhoto 2: CreditThis is the third post in the series - Kidzban Around the Web. You can read the first post here and the second post here.

Personal Kanban at NYC's Agile Learning Center

The Agile Learning Center at Manhattan Free School is designed to put young people in the driver’s seat of their learning and living – giving them the same opportunity and responsibility that we have as adults – to create their own lives.Each morning, we begin with a standup meeting. Everyone takes a turn stating their intentions for the day and making requests for any support they may need. At the end of the day, we come back for another standup meeting to reflect. Did we fulfill our intentions? If so, how? If not – why? What might we do differently tomorrow based on our awareness of today?This daily cycle of creation and reflection produces a powerful feedback loop, providing us clear information about the choices we make and the results of those choices. Between the bookends of this daily cycle, kanban boards are used to support mindfulness in our decision-making process.After morning standup, we use kanban boards to make our intentions visible. Speaking intentions is a start, but making them visible in physical space takes our awareness and commitment to the next level. Now we have a self-created roadmap for what’s possible.

A student kanban

From there, students practice prioritizing by surveying the possibilities for their day and moving things into READY or “Get Set”. What do I really want to do today? Who could I work or play with? What will nurture my body, mind, and spirit? A nine year-old may not be using these words or asking these specific questions, but the kanban process has them considering all of these factors in their own way.Next, we get to experience the power of making what’s possible a reality by pulling the selected intention into DOING or “Go”. ACTION! Deep engagement ensues. When we take the time to make conscious choices, we tend to be more focused, present, and committed to our actions, because we are taking ownership over the whole process.

Finish line on the student Kanban

When an intention is fulfilled, a task completed, or a curiosity explored, we come back to move the story across the finish line. Crossing the finish line does not mean that the story is over and done with. However, it does mark what we have created, and gives us the opportunity to reflect, assess, and constantly improve.

Wall of student kanbans

The kanban board is an extremely effective tool for breaking through our automatic thinking – informing ourselves of the past, visualizing the future, and bringing our attention to the present.Agile Learning Centers is an open-sourced education model for the 21st Century. Learn more about the very first Agile Learning Center at AgileLearn.org

Kidzban Around the Web #2

Around the web people are sharing their experiences with Kidzban.  This is the second post in the series – Kidzban Around the Web.Joseph Flahiff introduced Kanban to his daughters on a Saturday morning when they had guests arriving at 2pm, and they needed to get chores done before their guests arrived. Joseph states in his Saturday Chores with Kanban Part I  "Normally the girls choose all their chores before they start."  They were previously using a chores list set up in an excel program.  On this particular Saturday he decided on introducing a Kanban board.

KIdzban Saturday Chores

Take a look at this wonderful video below where Joseph interviews his daughters - JoHanna and Jillian. They discuss the few bumps in the road they encountered and how they tackled their challenges together and why they'd like to use the process again. Joseph's daughter JoHanna mentioned "There will still be some bumps but not the same ones because we've learned from our mistakes.""Working with a list we never really felt like we were working together.  We felt like competitors instead of teammates." - JoHannaThe next Saturday, Joseph's entire family got into the action even his 3 year old daughter Joy completed tasks on their Kanban.  The Saturday Chores with Kanban Part II highlights another wonderful video below where the girls discuss how they worked together and broke up the chores into smaller tasks so they weren't so overwhelming. Team work is personified when you hear how all three daughters managed the task of vacuuming the master bedroom together.When asked what her favorite part of using the Kanban was Jillian stated "The achievement of finishing a chore."You can read and view Joseph's Saturday Chores with Kanban Part I and Saturday Chores with Kanban Part II in their entirety by heading over to his WhiteWater Projects blog.Videos and photo credit: WhiteWater Projects Blog.This is the second post in the series - Kidzban Around the Web.  You can read the first post in the series here.

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