I know that Kanban boards are quite popular right now, and in certain work circumstances, they can be quite useful. What I am trying to understand, as a solo user, is if there is a way to use a Kanban workflow when you manage multiple projects at once. Does the paradigm lend itself to this? I can have as many as a dozen different projects/activities going at the same time, each with numerous subtasks with varying degrees of urgency. I just have not seen a Kanban program that easily accommodates a dozen projects without cluttering up a screen, nor have I seen one that can easily identify urgent tasks from all of my projects so I can see what is currently in need of attention. Am I just not seeing the right software, or is this just not the paradigm for handling multiple projects with multiple tasks and subtasks?

--Ken

Imagine a corkboard with index cards in, say, 3 columns: To-Do, Doing and Done. That's the bare essence of kanban. If you can imagine handling multiple projects on one board, great.

Otherwise use multiple boards.

Or a kanban system that has 'swimlanes,' like LeanKit to use one example:

https://leankit.com/learn/kanban/kanban-board-examples-for-development-and-operations/

If you have multiple projects running simultaneously with cross-dependencies then it's probably not your best friend. Something along the lines of a GANTT chart might be

satis wrote:

Imagine a corkboard with index cards in, say, 3 columns: To-Do, Doing
and Done. That's the bare essence of kanban. If you can imagine handling
multiple projects on one board, great.

Otherwise use multiple boards.

Or a kanban system that has 'swimlanes,' like LeanKit to use one
example:

https://leankit.com/learn/kanban/kanban-board-examples-for-development-and-operations/

It is not so much cross dependencies that mucks up the Kanban idea for me as much as the discrete boards. I do not want to look at 12 different boards to see what is urgent in each project. I would like to see all of the urgent items shown together (through a filter or search?) in one place and be able to easily identify to which project the task belongs. I have never seen this in the Kanban programs that I have either looked at or tried to use. This was the reason that I posted the question. I am wondering if I am missing something as far as a workable work flow, or if this is just the wrong tool. Currently I use MLO, and while it does what I want, but the UI is not easy to work with. Also, I am just wondering if I am selling Kanban boards short for this type of work.

--Ken

If you have multiple projects running simultaneously with
cross-dependencies then it's probably not your best friend. Something
along the lines of a GANTT chart might be

I believe the examples at the LeanKit site are probably more suited to a team of individuals working on a software development project. Kanban originated in manufacturing as a just-in-time scheduling system, so that everyone involved in the effort had a common understanding of what resources were needed where in the process.

For individuals, the “waiting”, “doing”, “done” three-board model without swim lanes is probably sufficient.

I think there are some apps that offer "filters" which can show you priority tasks across multiple boards. AirTable can do this but doesn't yet offer a Kanban view on iOS. I forget but I think MeisterTask might also offer such features...

https://airtable.com/
https://www.meistertask.com/

Another approach is to use IFTTT to create a todo in a task manager which supports it when you are assigned a high priority task in Trello.

https://ifttt.com/applets/341989p-sync-trello-and-todoist?term=trello

Oh, and I didn't know that Trello has a similar feature as well!

https://help.trello.com/article/819-viewing-all-of-your-cards

I've used kanban boards for different kinds of teams (IT related) and I'm also using kanban for personal task management.

A key feature of kanban boards s the notion of limited Work In Progress: in each "column" of your board (except maybe the first one which might be your backlog), you cannot have more than X cards at the same time (X has to be determined based on the context and the capacity of the individual or the team).

The ability of limiting work in progress is really a key feature of a kanban board.

My 2 cents,

Jerome

Paul Korm wrote:

I believe the examples at the LeanKit site are probably more suited to a
team of individuals working on a software development project.

Not really. I've repeatedly used swimlanes to break down to-dos based on family member, just as one example. You can use it to differentiate different projects so that you don't need to muck up multiple projects on one board (or have to use multiple boards). It's *extremely* useful.

I am not a big user of Kanban boards, though I do find them useful for tracking certain things (for instance, I use Trello to track printing and reprinting of books for the nonprofit publisher I work for). What you might find useful is an app like Asana, which allows you to view projects in Kanban boards, but also has other views. This way you can use the Kanban view when it is applicable, but also have other views for the big overviews you are looking. The free version of Asana is very useable.

Steve Z.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

What
you might find useful is an app like Asana, which allows you to view
projects in Kanban boards, but also has other views.

This is the raison d'être of Zenkit.com and Airtable.com does this as well.

If you mainly want infinite whiteboard space that offers kanban, sticky notes, mindmapping and images/video (plus collaboration) there's realtimeboard.com

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

I am not a big user of Kanban boards, though I do find them useful for
tracking certain things (for instance, I use Trello to track printing
and reprinting of books for the nonprofit publisher I work for). What
you might find useful is an app like Asana, which allows you to view
projects in Kanban boards, but also has other views. This way you can
use the Kanban view when it is applicable, but also have other views for
the big overviews you are looking. The free version of Asana is very
useable.

Steve Z.

I tried Asana for some time a few years ago, but two big things turned me off. First, they removed the tag navigation pane in the left column, and that just seemed plain stupid to me. Second, their comment section is combined with their activities, and their activities records everything, including when I yawn and burp. It was almost impossible to use the comments section as it was so cluttered. But, yes, Asana has a lot of useful features. If only they could clean up these UI issues, then I would reconsider.

--Ken

Hyper Plan allows you to:

-group tasks into swim lanes and columns
-colour-code cards (e.g. red=high priority)
-filter cards (e.g. hide all cards except those for project 1)
-switch 'views' so you can easily switch between different layouts/filters etc

It sounds like a fairly good fit for what you are trying to do.

It is desktop-based (Windows or Mac), but you can share a plan between multiple computers using DropBox or similar.

There is a free trial:
https://www.hyperplan.com/download.html

--
Andy Brice
http://www.hyperplan.com

Andy Brice wrote:

Hyper Plan allows you to:

-group tasks into swim lanes and columns
-colour-code cards (e.g. red=high priority)
-filter cards (e.g. hide all cards except those for project 1)
-switch 'views' so you can easily switch between different
layouts/filters etc

It sounds like a fairly good fit for what you are trying to do.

It is desktop-based (Windows or Mac), but you can share a plan between
multiple computers using DropBox or similar.

There is a free trial:
https://www.hyperplan.com/download.html

--
Andy Brice
http://www.hyperplan.com

Hyper Plan did come to mind when I wrote the OP, but I also wanted hear how others use Kanban boards to manage multiple projects. The question was somewhat academic as I wanted to see if I was taking a limited view of Kanban boards. I still do not believe that it is the best solution for the way I work, but if you do not ask, you never know what is or is not possible.

--Ken

A good desktop White-Board is one of a few genres with no niche market leader in the public psyche, and no established brand in popular IT culture. If anyone does a good job of a free floating board for desktop, offline for privacy primarily, they will brand the niche genre for themselves and will be multi millionaires.

If I remember correctly Andy has a free-floating feature in the works for hyper plan for some time now, but others are probably working on similar projects. For market dominance, with a good enough start, it's first come first served and winner takes all, or almost all as the established market leader name and brand. Once owned and entrenched, the brand goes viral by itself, long term.

washere wrote:

If anyone does a good job of a free floating board for desktop,
offline for privacy primarily, they will brand the niche genre for
themselves and will be multi millionaires.

Do you mean a feature to freely place cards (rather than constrain them to columns and swim-lanes)? If so, that is high on the wishlist for v3. I don't know about multi-millionaire though. Kanban/project management/productivity is a very crowded market and it is not easy to get noticed, especially when you are up against competitors with vast amounts of VC cash to throw around.

--
Andy Brice
http://www.hyperplan.com

Yes but the few with free floating function all have one or more problems: being an online version, clumsy or terrible UI, primarily being a to-do or calendar or timeline or Gantt etc. instead of just a good Visual Board for cards. Their cards functions are not as good as HP either.

@washere

It is definitely something I would like to do for v3. Along with various other improvements.

BTW The best way to become a millionaire writing productivity software is to start off as a billionaire. ;0)

--
Andy Brice
http://www.hyperplan.com

I concur with the suggestion for tools that offer kanban as a view among several others; I also use Zenkit this way. Another worth exploring is https://kantree.io Check the Visualise animation for a summary of the available views.


Stephen Zeoli wrote:

What
you might find useful is an app like Asana, which allows you to view
projects in Kanban boards, but also has other views.

satis wrote:

This is the raison d'etre of Zenkit.com and Airtable.com does this
as well.

Hi Andy,

As noted in the past, I believe that Hyperplan would greatly expand its market if it had a web version. have you given it a (more positive) thought? I understand from Neville Frank's account of moving from Surfulater to Clibu that it's a whole new world, and a complex one indeed; that said, Hyperplan is one of the few novel approaches in information management that I've seen in a long time, and there's nothing comparable to it in the web applications offered out there--Kantree, mentioned above, is the closest I can think of, but it's much more limited.

I've made templates for my uses in a couple of programs, not mentioned in this thread, which speeds up creating new documents. Also you can use for Visual Boards/Kanbans purposes: various MindMap software.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

As noted in the past, I believe that Hyperplan would greatly expand its
market if it had a web version.

What aspect of moving it to the web do you think would broaden its appeal?

1. Web UI
A web UI is generally less rich and less responsive than a native UI.

2. No install
Not having to install software is a bonus. But Hyper Plan only takes a minute or so to download and install.

3. Collaboration
Hyper Plan is less suitable for team collaboration than many of its web competitors, due to a lack of centralised server. But we could add a server component for the current native UI. An on-premise server would allow you to keep full control of your precious data.

Certainly moving to the web would require a lot of effort and mean we were directly competing with lots of VC funded companies.

--
Andy Brice
http://www.hyperplan.com

Collaboration. I've been using information management tools for as long as I can remember, and the output has mostly been published as PDFs, spreadsheets and websites for others to view--but this way most of them missed the structure only visible from within the tools themselves. The breakthrough came with the advent of collaborative solutions, where I can actually invite my collaborators to see things as I see them, and work in a common information framework, even to further develop the framework itself.

What you suggest --a client server version of Hyperplan if I understand it correctly-- would be a step in the right direction. We would definitely need remote access to our common files (about half the time we do not work from our office) but I assume that this can be handled via VPN.


Andy Brice wrote:

What aspect of moving it to the web do you think would broaden its
appeal?

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

What you suggest --a client server version of Hyperplan if I understand
it correctly-- would be a step in the right direction. We would
definitely need remote access to our common files (about half the time
we do not work from our office) but I assume that this can be handled
via VPN.

A client-server version of Hyper Plan could presumably communicate over https. Then there wouldn't be any problem with corporate firewalls. And you could install the server where you liked.

it would be a little more difficult that a web solution to set-up and you might have to install updates to the client and server from time to time. But you could have full control over your data.

--
Andy Brice
http://www.hyperplan.com

We can definitely live with that :)

Andy Brice wrote:

it would be a little more difficult that a web solution to set-up and
you might have to install updates to the client and server from time to
time. But you could have full control over your data.

A bit late to the table ...

This is solely for macOS.

WRT multiple projects with numerous sub-tasks: I use a combination of Curio and OmniFocus. I have three or more Kanban boards in one main GTD project file in Curio (and others in other targeted project files). I use the multiple boards to track the status of projects in different areas of responsibility. The projects are hyper-linked to corresponding entrees in OmniFocus, where the task management is handled. The link is two-way, so that I can at any time jump to the OF task level or the Curio overview level.

WRT identifying the status of projects: The advantage of Curio for this is in its Status Panel. I can group projects by a range criteria, including dates, ratings, priorities, or tags (grouped in tag sets). I especially like that I can use the Status Panel to control-click and set various states of the projects (e.g. update the percentage complete). The mirror in OF is the ability to set defined perspectives for the task-level management.

In summary, I also have not seen or have not been excited enough to adopt a "dedicated" Kanban program to try to manage dozens of projects with dozens of sub-tasks. Since I use Curio extensively for other things and since I used OmniFocus to manage the tasks, it was a natural to try to blend the two. For me, it has become a match made in Kanban+GTD heaven.

Ken wrote:

I know that Kanban boards are quite popular right now, and in certain
work circumstances, they can be quite useful. What I am trying to
understand, as a solo user, is if there is a way to use a Kanban
workflow when you manage multiple projects at once. Does the paradigm
lend itself to this? I can have as many as a dozen different
projects/activities going at the same time, each with numerous subtasks
with varying degrees of urgency. I just have not seen a Kanban program
that easily accommodates a dozen projects without cluttering up a
screen, nor have I seen one that can easily identify urgent tasks from
all of my projects so I can see what is currently in need of attention.
Am I just not seeing the right software, or is this just not the
paradigm for handling multiple projects with multiple tasks and
subtasks?

--Ken