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Kanban (Japanese: card) is a way to divide the work on complex tasks into smaller tasks and to visualize them. The principle is particularly suitable for agile (learning) projects, since not all tasks are already known at the beginning of the project and prioritizations can change frequently. In its simplest form, a Kanban board consists of three columns in which the work packages are organized (To Do, Doing, Done). Just give it a try:
For the organization of an agile project it has become established to work with four columns (To Do, In Progress, Check, Done) and to assign the To Dos directly to responsible persons. The check column is introduced in order to be able to signal that the task has been completed from the team's point of view. If the result was approved in the review meeting, the card can be moved to Done.
Often a further backlog column is introduced for project planning, in which all tasks to be completed in the project are collected. In general, the term backlog refers to a lot of work that has accumulated over time or a stock of jobs waiting to be completed. The backlog is not complete, nor does it claim to be. At the beginning of a project, it contains the known and best understood requirements and serves as a source for filling the To Do column of the current sprint.
When working with an analogue Kanban board, it should be ensured that it is easily accessible to all team members and that the board is updated regularly. If the status of the tasks cannot be seen "in passing by", regular stand-up meetings should be held by all team members (about 15 minutes) to inform all involved about the status of the processing. The team members have to take care on their own to remain informed about status changes.
An alternative to analogue Kanban is the introduction of a digital Kanban board. The advantage of a digital Kanban board is the possibility to implement an automated notification in case of a status change of tasks, to allow comments on the status or to upload intermediate statuses as documents to the cards. Tools such as Kanboard, Jira or Trello are suitable for this purpose.
A simple implementation of a digital Kanban board, which focuses on the most important functionalities for agile (learning) projects, was also implemented for the Agile Learning Academy.
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Further Information
A free and widely used Kanban application is Trello. Trello is available for all common operating systems and as a smartphone app: https://trello.com/
Instructions on how to set up a Kanban board in MS Project 2016 can be found here: https://youtu.be/81PvB1zKh-I
No native Kanban is supported for Ms Project 2010, but with some creative energy you can still create a Kanban view: http://www.cambermast.com/agile-ideas-create-kanban-board-microsoft-project/
