All Entries in the "DesignPatterns" Category

The Retrospective Column

When we make our work and our process explicit, and we do retrospectives, it makes sense to have a retrospective column in our Personal Kanban. The thought here is fairly simple: at the beginning of each day move tasks from Complete into Retrospective. Then, at the end of the week (or whenever you wish) take [...]

Dependencies in Personal Kanban

Dependencies are things that occur in succession. One thing happens, then another thing can happen. Ideally, on a kanban, the value stream will visualize these transitions. For a value stream like this:
Analysis -> Creation -> Refinement -> Launch
refinement is dependent on both analysis and creation.
That neatly takes care of dependencies, but in our Personal Kanban [...]

The Priority Filter: A Tutorial

Prioritization is often even more difficult and daunting as the tasks that confront you. A priority filter in your Personal Kanban helps you determine what tasks are ready in your queue, and the order of importance they should assume.  Click on the video below for a quick priority filter tutorial.
Note: This video is best viewed [...]

Tools Talk: Julia Child Understood the Nature of Work

While expertise, good humor, humanity, and care are words that immediately come to mind when describing Julia Child, the iconic chef personified something else – she understood the nature of her work. She recognized the role it played, the value it brought, the actions involved in creating it, and the opportunity costs in choosing certain [...]

Towards a Leaner Santa: Holiday “Do” Date-ban

Chalk it up to a decade with the nuns and my time as a Girl Scout (always be prepared!), but I obsess over details. Having my “stuff” in one bag or my proverbial ducks in a row is how I delude myself into thinking I can make sense of my universe. Still, I spend many [...]

InfoPak 3 – Personal Kanban Design Patterns: Inspiration to Discover Your Flow

Info Pak3 Personal Kanban Design Patterns
View more documents from Jim Benson.

Modus Cooperandi is pleased to announce the release of its third Personal Kanban InfoPak. In Personal Kanban Design Patterns: Inspiration to Discover Your Flow we present a series of patterns for individuals as well as for small “teams.” Among the topics discussed: approaches tailored to [...]

Multiple Projects & Threaded WIP: Using The Big Picture for Personal Kanban

The two rules of Personal Kanban: Limit WIP and visualize your work.
The truth about personal work: it’s messy.
So people with messy work have been asking me for:

ways to create multiple Personal Kanban(s) with unique workflows,
ways to manage the WIP of multiple projects in one kanban,
ways to manage projects with different collaborators, and
better ways to integrate [...]

Pulling in Batches – The “Today” Column

We don’t always pull one task at a time. Every day, cognitively, we pull in batches.

GTD & Kanban: Managing The Relationship Between Someday/Maybe & Active Projects

In my previous post, “GTD & Kanban: Similarities, Differences & Synergies Between The Two“ in this series, I talked about using Kanban for managing the flow of work, rather than having any number of projects and someday/maybe items in separate lists which are reviewed every week to a month.  In this post I will describe how [...]

A WIP Workout: Pomodoro and Personal Kanban

Pomodoro is the workout: Personal Kanban is the trainer.