How to Make an Ideal Kanban Workflow for Your Team

如何制定一个理想的看板工作流

2020-07-10 05:20 project manager

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A kanban board is simple to use, but it can be a powerful tool for teams. A kanban board creates a visual workflow that illustrates how a team works together and how work is produced. Such workflows help teams improve productivity by providing a glimpse into efficiency at each project stage. Historically, kanban was used in manufacturing and development teams, but managers across all industries have joined in the fun after seeing just how helpful the tool can be. In this article we’ll show you how to set up a professional kanban workflow that will work wonders for your team. Why Make a Kanban Workflow When a workflow is represented visually on a kanban board, a team can learn loads of information about how they work together. Teams can see which stages of a project are efficient, where bottlenecks are occurring, and whether other team members might need help in order to keep things on track. Kanban workflows offer an easy-to-read glimpse into work, so naturally managers love them. Managers can monitor the workflow in real time to understand their team’s productivity, and then optimize their work processes for future projects. Kanban workflows are also helpful for keeping stakeholders in-the-loop. Your boss won’t have to chase you down for a project update if they can simply look at the workflow and know exactly what’s going on in the project. How to Make a Kanban Workflow in 6 Easy Steps Kanban boards are deceptively simple. They are easy to set up, but first you have to understand the mechanics. Here’s how to create a kanban workflow. 1. Signup for a Kanban Tool The first step in making your workflow is to sign up for kanban software. ProjectManager.com’s kanban tools are free for 30 days, so sign up for a free trial. You can try out the tools before having to pay any money or make any commitments. 2. Add Your Team Members While kanban boards can be used to manage the work of a single person, they are extra helpful when used by a team. Once you are in the kanban software, you should invite all of your team members so that they can collaborate with you on your projects. At this point, you can also invite any stakeholders that you’d like to keep informed. However, you may want to wait until your workflow is built out so that they have something to look at the first time they log in. ProjectManager.com makes it easy to invite new people to your workspace at any time, and offers different permission levels for each new team member. This gives you control over who sees what within the workspace. 3. Make a New Kanban Project Once your team members have been invited to the workspace, you’ll need to create your first project to house the workflow. Navigate to the big green “+” in the top right corner of your screen and click it to add a new project. Give your new project a name, choose who will be working on this project and click “create project”. All of your project details can be edited later, so don’t worry too much about getting this perfect. The most important thing is that you get a new project launched so you can begin building your workflow. Related: 4 Must-Have Features for a Kanban Tool 4. Add All of Your Tasks Now that your new project is created, navigate to the “Board” tab in the menu to go to the kanban board view. This is where you will build out your entire kanban workflow. On the default board screen, you’ll see three columns that are already built for you: To Do, Doing, and Done. To Do: This column will host all of the tasks that need to be done in order to complete your project. Doing: This column will show all of the tasks that are currently being worked on. Done: This column will show which tasks are complete. Start by adding all of your team’s tasks to “To-Do”. Give each new task a name and create a kanban card for it. In our example, we’ll be creating a kanban workflow for a marketing team that has been asked to add two new webpages to their company website. We’ve added two tasks called “New Webpage 1” and “New Webpage 2” to the To Do column. You should then click into each task and add a little bit more information about this task, so that team members have all of the information they need once they begin working. You can add a task description, start dates and due dates, and attach any necessary files. 5. Make Custom Columns Now that a task has been created for each piece of the project, we can begin customizing the columns to fit our team’s workflow. We know that we need to build two new webpages, but that’s easier said than done—there are many different people who will be involved with this project. Therefore, we’ll create custom columns to represent each stage of the creation process. The different stages of creation for a webpage are content writing and editing, design, publishing and promotion. Since this kanban workflow will be more complicated than the standard three columns that are currently in place, we will update the columns. The old columns were To-Do Doing Done But after we customize our project, the new columns are (from left-to-right) To Do Write and Edit Content Design Publish Promote 6. Assign the Work Now that the project phases are created and ready to go, we can begin utilizing the workflow. Since the first thing needed in order to build a webpage is content, we’ll move “New Webpage 1” into the “Content” column and assign the task to the content writer. Once a task is assigned to a team member, they will receive an email notification letting them know to get to work. The kanban workflow is now in action! After the content writer finishes their work, they can attach the content to the task, move the task into “Editing,” and re-assign the task to the editor. Once the editing is done, the task is moved to “Design” and so on until the webpage is done. You’ll be able to see the task as it flows through the creation process, hence the name “workflow.” Best Practices for Kanban Workflows Once the workflow is up-and-running, it is important to keep an eye on it to make sure things are going smoothly. Sometimes you’ll find that you need to add a new column to the workflow if new people become involved, and the process becomes more complex. It’s also important to keep an eye out for bottlenecks in the workflow. A bottleneck is where a project gets stuck and stops moving forward. To use our example workflow again, maybe you notice that the two new webpages are due for publishing in three days, but both are still sitting in the “Design” column. In this case, your web designers might be overloaded with work, so you may want to see if another designer can help. Related: 12 Resource Allocation Tips for Managers This is why kanban workflows are so useful: they can help you catch problems as they happen, and prevent problems that could cause delays in project completion. ProjectManager.com Takes Kanban Even Further You can build all of your kanban workflows in ProjectManager.com to collaborate with your team and get more work done efficiently. Thousands of teams all over the world utilize our platform on a daily basis to stay organized and do amazing things. In addition to kanban boards, ProjectManager.com also offers a whole suite of useful project management tools. These include Gantt charts for making project plans, timesheets for tracking time on work, and project reports for analyzing the productivity of a team. ProjectManager.com is an award-winning tool that organizes teams and projects. Our cloud-based software gives you real-time data, so you can make better decisions and lead the project to a successful end. Try our kanban boards and see how we can streamline your workflow by taking a free 30-day trial. How to Make an Agile Workflow for Your Team How to Define a Workflow Process Kanban Inventory Management: How to Run a Kanban System Best Kanban Software of 2020
"看板"用起来很简单,对团队来说却是一个非常强大的工具。看板创建了一个可视化的工作流,展示团队内部如何协同工作,以及完成工作的全过程。 这样的工作流,可以让团队直观了解项目每个阶段的推进情况,从而帮助团队提高生产效率。 最初,看板这个工具用在制造和研发团队中。后来,在看到这个工具所带来的强大帮助后,几乎所有行业的管理者们都用起来了。在本文中,我们将向您展示如何建立一个专业的看板工作流,促进团队创造奇迹。 为什么要制定看板工作流 当在看板板上以可视化的方式展示工作流时,团队可以清晰地了解到他们之间该如何协同工作。团队可以看到项目的哪些阶段运行良好,哪里存在瓶颈,以及是否需要为某些团队成员提供帮助从而保持项目正常进行。 看板工作流展示了简洁直观的工作概貌,所以管理者自然喜欢使用。 管理者可以实时监控工作流,以了解他们团队的生产情况,进而为将来的项目优化工作流程。 看板工作流还有助于让相关方保持对项目的同步了解。如果你的上级主管可以直观地查看工作流,并确切地知道项目进展情况,他们就不必再屡屡督促你更新项目状态了。 只需 6 步,制定完美看板工作流 看板简捷易用。它们很容易设置,但你需要先了解其工作机制。 下面介绍如何创建看板工作流。 1. 注册看板工具 制定工作流的第一步是注册看板软件。 ProjectManager.com 的看板工具可以免费使用 30天。可以先注册免费试用。用得好,再付费。 2. 添加团队成员 尽管看板也可以用于管理单个人员的工作,但是我们推荐将其用于团队协作,帮助更大。 你进入看板软件后,可以邀请你的所有团队成员,这样他们就可以在你的项目上进行协作。 此时,您还可以邀请任何您希望了解项目信息的相关方。不过,你可能希望先把工作流建好之后再邀请他们,以便他们在第一次登录时有内容可看。 ProjectManager.com 可以在任何时候邀请新成员进入你的工作区,并为每个新团队成员设置不同的权限级别。 这样可以控制每个人可以在工作区看到的内容。 3. 创建一个新的看板项目 你把团队成员邀请到工作区之后,需要创建第一个项目来承载工作流。 导航到你屏幕右上角的绿色大“+”符号,点击它来添加一个新项目。为新项目命名,选择谁将在此项目上工作,然后单击“创建项目”。 所有项目细节都可以在以后编辑,所以不用太担心现在就把它设置周全。最重要的是,你启动了一个新项目,这样你就可以开始构建工作流。 相关阅读:看板工具必须具备的 4 个功能 4. 添加所有任务 现在,新项目已经创建。导航到菜单中的“Board”选项卡,转到看板视图。在这里构建整个看板工作流。 在默认的看板上,你将看到已经构建的三列:To Do(待办项)、Doing(工作项)和 Done(完成项)。 To Do:本列将包含将要开展的所有任务。 Doing:本列将显示当前正在处理的所有任务。 Done:本列将显示已经完成的任务。 首先,将团队所有要开展的任务添加到“To-Do”。给每个新任务命名,并为其创建看板卡。在我们的示例中,我们将为一个营销团队创建看板工作流,该团队需要向其公司网站添加两个新网页。 我们在 To Do 列中添加了名为“New Webpage 1”和“New Webpage 2”的两个任务。 然后,单击每个任务并添加有关该任务的更多信息,以便团队成员在开始工作时获得所需的所有信息。 可以添加任务说明,开始日期和截止日期,并附加任何必要的文件。 5. 自定义列 在为项目的每个部分创建了任务之后,我们可以根据团队工作流的需要,自定义一些列。 在本例中,我们需要建立两个新的网页,但这说起来容易做起来难 - 有许多不同的人将参与这个项目。 因此,我们将创建自定义列来表示网页创建过程的每个阶段。 网页创建的不同阶段包括:内容撰写和编辑,网页设计,网页发布,以及推广。 由于这个看板工作流将比目前的标准三列更加复杂,因此我们将更新这些列。 旧的列是 To-Do Doing Done 在我们自定义项目之后,新列是(从左到右) To Do(待办项) Write and Edit Content(撰写和编辑内容) Design(网页设计) Publish(网页发布) Promote(推广) 6. 分配工作 现在,项目阶段已经创建并准备就绪,我们可以开始使用工作流了。 由于创建网页所需要的第一件事是内容,我们将把“New webpage1”移到“Content”列中,并将任务分配给内容撰写人员。一旦任务分配给团队成员,他们就会收到一封电子邮件通知,开始着手工作。 看板工作流现已启动!在内容编写人员完成他们的工作后,他们可以将任务移到"Editing",并将任务重新分配给编辑人员。在编辑完成后,任务就移到“Design”上,依此类推,直到网页完成。 你能看到整个任务在网页创建的整个流程中的流动,因此称为“工作流”。 看板工作流的最佳实践 一旦工作流启动并运行,重要的是要保持对它的关注以确保事情按计划顺利进行。有时候,如果有新的人员加入进来,你可能需要增加一列,而整个流程会变得比原来稍复杂一些。 此外,关注工作流中的瓶颈也很重要。瓶颈是项目陷入困境,停止前进的地方。 我们仍然以本例作为说明,也许你注意到这两个新的网页按计划应该在三天后发布,但目前它们都仍然在“Design”栏中。在这种情况下,您的网页设计人员可能是工作负担过重,因此你可能需要看看是否有其他设计人员可以提供帮助。 相关阅读:给管理者的 12 个资源配置小贴士 这就是看板工作流的用处所在:可以帮助你及时发现问题,并防止造成项目延误。 ProjectManager.com 进一步发掘看板的强大潜力 您可以在 ProjectManager.com 中构建所有项目的看板工作流,以便团队协作并高效地完成更多工作。 全世界每天有数千人使用我们的平台来管理项目并完成令人惊叹的成果。 除了看板,ProjectManager.com还提供一整套好用的项目管理工具。 其中包括用于制定项目计划的甘特图,用于跟踪工作时间的时间表,以及用于分析团队生产力的项目报告。 ProjectManager.com 作为一款高效的项目管理工具,屡获殊荣。我们基于云端的平台,让你实时看到数据,从而做出更好的决策,圆满完成项目。欢迎体验我们的看板工具,简化工作流。现在注册,30天免费使用。 如何制定敏捷工作流 如何定义工作流的流程 看板清单管理:如何运行看板系统 2020年度最佳看板软件

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