Managing a team and different tasks requires skills and may be stressful. Being a project manager, you have to handle risky and intense tasks, demanding precise control. However, because of technological advancements, different powerful tools have become helpful. With these tools, you can transform the chaotic workflow into a well-organized and smooth workflow.
Among them, Kanban software is one of the best tools to organize your projects.
Let us discover the amazing features of Kanban software and how it helps project managers streamline their workload.
What is Kanban?
First, you must understand what Kanban is. Kanban is a project management technique. It helps the project managers to visualize the work of their team on easy-to-use boards. These allow facilitation in the planning, scheduling, and tracking of the tasks.
Project managers can be fully transparent in the task management process using the Kanban method. It includes kanban boards, cards, principles, and practices.it is commonly used to manage production and software development projects.
What is a Kanban Board?
A kanban board can be considered as the evolution of dry-erase markers or sticky notes. It is an organizational system that ensures that all the team members remain informed about task assignments. Moreover, it also mentions due dates and other relevant information in a single visually intuitive space.
A Kanban board includes a series of columns and cards that display individual tasks and their progress stages. For instance, stages can be the status of the task and be named “to-do”, “work in progress”, “pending”, or “completed”. Every team member is assigned a card that will be responsible for completing the work and then moving the card from one column to the next till the end.
How Does Kanban Help to Streamline the Workflow
Here are the various features of Kanban that help project managers to smooth and optimize their workflow.
Visualize Your Workflow
Te Wu, CEO of PMO Advisory, says, “The Kanban tool is the best when there are multiple Kanban cards in the visual board that you can drag around. You can use an electronic Kanban system as software, a whiteboard, or an office wall with different sticky notes on it. A Kanban board facilitates transparency by visualizing the whole process.
Moreover, it also gives your team a simple understood method to complete the tasks. There are many advanced software that provide built-in data visualization, which helps your team to always have access to the Kanban board and its cards.”
Limit All Work in Progress (WIP)
The kanban technique is a pull system that motivates your team to fulfill their tasks before stepping onto a new one. Because of this, a sense of focus is established among the team. It also shows the stakeholders that there is a limited capacity for each team that must be carefully considered.
At a specific time, you should not find more than 1 or 2 items under the “on-going” or “in-progress” heading for each person. Once the task card moves to “completed”, they can pull an item from “in progress” or “doing” to done and repeat the process.
Manage the Workflow
A significant aspect of the Kanban system is noticing your workflow. It also includes ensuring that production levels are continuously improving. Ultimately, it means that you must identify drawbacks in your process and carefully handle how long work items stay in different stages.
If your work is piling up or staying in a specific stage for too long, you should make adjustments. Over time, your team’s workflow will improve and the completion process will become more predictable and smooth.
Provide a Structure to Your Process Policies
When the process policies are defined more precisely, it will make everyone’s job easier. You are mainly building a framework for “how to work” that every team member understands and feels good about.
Using the Kanban technique, this process of policy creation initiates with the development of common checklists for every work type. Moreover, it should also include creating detailed descriptions of swim lanes or columns, defining task completion, how much work-in-progress is accepted, and identifying when to pull cards.
Improve and Evolve With the Scientific Method
The Kanban methodology helps you to be adaptable and improve at a pace that everyone can handle. Plus, it also encourages the utilization of the scientific method which creates a hypothesis, tests it, and makes different changes according to your test results.
As you make various changes and repeat the test, your system will grow stronger. The tests and the use of scientific methods do not slow down the process but make it even better and give good results.
Better Collaboration and Increased Productivity
When you use Kanban, you promote better collaboration among the team members. It is done by making the workflow more transparent. It also encourages accountability so each member knows what must be done and when since the tasks are tracked and allocated. This results in improved collaboration and communication between teams. Hence, it improves the productivity as an outcome.
Kanban also supports productivity as it enables direct and clear communication. Increase visibility and provide a visual framework for different tasks. It will allow everyone to communicate efficiently and effectively. It leads to reduced workload and fast turnaround times.
Essential Features to Look for in Kanban Software
There are a few must features that should be inside a Kanban software.
- Boards: Here you will keep your tasks organized.
- Columns: Shows stages in the task process.
- Cards: These are tasks that can be moved through various stages.
- Swimlanes: Groups tasks to organize better.
- Collaboration Tools: It is a feature to get your team engaged.
- Reports: Gives insights on how the work progresses and areas that require improvement.
- UI/UX: The UI/UX should facilitate users to address the interface effortlessly.
Conclusion
Kanban software can significantly change the team’s performance and approach. Such software can improve operations by building visibility to the workflow, preventing multitasking, and encouraging continuous improvement. At the same time, it will also increase the productivity of the business. Hence, with the help of the Kanban method and proper tools, businesses can improve their project management and make their tasks more successful.