Kanban boards help us manage the work we do and their status during the different stages of development. This work can range from anything: - [[Projects]] - Creative [[Outputs]] - [[Note types]] ## Benefits - Gives us a systemic control for the flow of our work - Visualized overview to understand your workload and progress - Help identify bottlenecks if there is not a consistent flow - This will definitely expose your content overconsumption like it does for me 🤣 ## Parts There are two main parts: ### Tokens - Each thing we are working on is represented by their own token on the board - Tokens also contain information related to said work - ex) If the **work** is creating a coffee, you can think of the cup as the token, which will have the information on it like size, name, and type of drink labelled To store these tokens, we put them in columns. ### Columns Each column represents a stage of the completion process. At minimum there are three columns: - Backlog (for things not yet started) - In progress (for things in progress) - Completed (fulfilled) Usually **In progress** is the one that gets further elaborated. If we continue the coffee case, after a customer makes an order and the cup is filled out with information, it is in the **backlog** phase. Eventually when the barista is free they will bring it to **in progress**, and once they finish the drink it would be **completed**. But how do you know when things should be moving from one stage to another? There are two types of columns: #### Pull Pull is when something from a [[#Push]] column is moved only if it is ready to work on or when the pull column has available capacity. In project management, pull columns help us control our workload by limiting the max tokens you can place on the column. ![[My Inputs/My Books/Slow Productivity#^kfxcm9]] For a single barista they may only have 1 drink going on at the same time so they would not be able to grab another cup until their **pull** column is finished, grabbing a new cup from the backlog to make when available. #### Push Push is a column that moves tokens after it is finished - Also pull if given a signal (empty supply of a certain ingredient) - Make sure that the transition to the next stage is clear, when in doubt make a new column ## Applications Sometimes, some projects might be too big. If you decide to not break down the **in progress** column to multiple levels, then you can instead break down the token into more steps like so: ![[My Inputs/My Books/Slow Productivity#^x06i4q]] ### Collaboration When using kanbans as part of a client relationship or collaborative process, be sure to also communicate your activity: ![[My Inputs/My Books/Slow Productivity#^x7ipco]]