My Kanban Board

Sample Kanban Board

The Daily Kanban Board

Capture daily project activities of all your projects on a spreadsheet. Use the Kanban Board spreadsheet to make important project notes. The Kanban Board notes will be used to update your MS Project plans or other project tracking software. Keep it very simple with three columns consisting of To Do, In Progress, and Done. Create a daily tab on the spreadsheet carrying forward outstanding activities on the new Kanban Board spreadsheet tab. The tabs come in real handy as a source of historical activities on the projects.

Kanban Board at a Glance

Having a visual view of all your projects on a spreadsheet Kanban Board style is very useful to help keep you on top of everything.

Updating Project Plans

Review the daily Kanban Board at the end of the day. Update your projects plans with the final project activity notes for the day. Updating your project plans throughout day to keep it fresh is good, but there are days that it's better left untouched till the dust settles at the end of the day.

Sample Kanban Board Spreadsheet

This is an actual snapshot of my Kanban Board spreadsheet that I use. You need to enlarge it to see it better. 

(Note - this article was originally written by Drake Settsu and published on projectmanagement.com/blogs/419316/Project-Management-in-Real-Life in May 2018)

Bring in the Business Analyst

We live in a world with technology to give businesses the ability to run an efficient operation. Well that's not going to happen if the wrong components and processes are in place or it's time for a technology refresh.  

The Business Analyst is the person that needs to understand how the business operates to meet their objectives now and into the future. A good Business Analyst needs to roll up their sleeves and get dirty digging for information. A Business Analyst needs to work with the business units by documenting the process flow by observation and asking a lot of questions. Spend a week with the business unit that is targeted for improvement to get a good feel on how they operate.

Something to remember when you work on improving a process. I was told by an instructor in a class I attended on process improvement, "If you can measure it, you can manage it."