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How to Use and Set Up The Kanban Management Method to Organize Anything from a Full Blown Project or Simple To Do List

Apr 16, 2024 | How to Be More Productive, Productivity

Ever feel like your team’s drowning in a sea of to-dos? Tasks pile up, deadlines loom, and motivation evaporates like steam in a sauna. 

Say konnichiwa to Kanban, the Japanese productivity method that will rescue you and your team from your drowning workflow.

Invented by Toyota in the 1950s, Kanban isn’t a fancy app or a secret samurai technique. It’s a visual system that uses boards and cards to keep track of work, flow, and well, sanity.

Kanban uses a visual system with three key stages:

  1. To Do: This is your starting point, where you enter each of your tasks. If you’re using this to manage a large project make sure you break down each and every task. Check out episode 14 titled Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich Homework Assignment Lesson where we give you the details on how to do this right.
  2. In Progress: Tasks move here once your team starts working on them. 
  3. Done: This means they are totally completed. If something needs checking or testing it stays in progress. Only fully completed tasks get moved here.

The framework gives full transparency so everyone can see what’s being worked on, where things stand, and how they can contribute.

And KanBan has been researched to show its effectiveness…

A study titled the “Impact of Kanban on Software Development Team Performance: A Case Study” examined the implementation of Kanban in a software development team. It found significant improvements in delivery speed, team productivity, and communication compared to traditional methods.

Another study titled “The Effects of Kanban on Project Performance and Team Dynamics” analyzed the impact of Kanban on various project parameters in different industries. 

It concluded that Kanban significantly improved project completion rates, team satisfaction, and responsiveness to changes.

And another study done by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2021 found that Kanban teams experienced a 20% increase in work completed and a 30% drop in stress levels compared to traditional to-do list methods. 

To set up a KanBan board you can use an Excel or Google Spreadsheet and divide it into three tabs or even one tab with three sections so everything is on one page. 

Divide it into the three sections…To Do, In Progress, and Done.

Load up To Do and move things through the other two sections as you and your team make progress.

If you want a more sophisticated program check out Trello or Jira, both have the ability to use the KanBan format for project management.

Kanban encourages transparency and collaboration. Everyone can see what’s being worked on, where bottlenecks are, and how they can contribute.

So, ditch the drowning feeling and let the KanBan board come to the rescue.  You and your team’s efficiency will increase, people will be less stressed and you’ll be better prepared to meet and beat deadlines.

Your move.

If you liked this post you’ll ❤️ the…PRODUCTIVITY Podcast I host where you get a daily dose of productivity in LESS than 4 minutes a day.