Why use Kanban Board?
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Project management tool | Agile
For the past few years, agile has completely redefined the way the software industry works. Since agile and its underlying framework support the ‘quick-enough’ change concept, it started to dominate manufacturing, food, and automobile industries too. But some resistance is always there to adopt and understand this approach. One of the important aspects is it requires full transparency of work.
Email, other communication tools, project management tools, documentation tool… What else! Numerous tools are available to track the overall progress of the project. But why kanban board? Let’s find out
Basically, Kanban means ‘visual cards’ in the Japanese language. The kind of flow efficiency and productivity it offers is incredible. That’s why I want to share my experience.
I was using the Planview Lean kit.
Hold on. Is lean different from agile? Yes. The only difference between them is, agile focuses on optimization of the development process whereas lean focuses on the improvement of the production process. Nevertheless, both prioritize customer satisfaction as their primary goal.
What is Kanban?
It is a tool that allows the team to view, manage, and maintain projects. I started to use it for my final year project. It helped me to organize tasks in the most effective way. The best part is all the important information on one single page; Task details, the person who is in charge of it, deadline, priority level, parent cards...
It also allows the user to split the entire pane vertically as well as horizontally. This time tracking feature of moving cards from one category to another is supported by a drag-drop feature and email notification.
So, to be brief
1. Progress visibility (particularly for a pull-based approach)
2. Users can track card history and filter cards based on activity status, date, assigned user…
3. Analysis and report
4. Helps in identification of bottlenecks
5. Good collaborative space
But few things that could make it better are
1. Having a chat panel
2. Mobile access
Apart from that, it is well suited for the fast-paced working environment of large teams. The simplicity and range of functionalities it offers help the user to enhance the effectiveness of team productivity. This on-site tool for project management is worth a try!
