All Entries Tagged With: "design patterns"

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 [...]

Urgent and Important: Incorporating your existing tools into Personal Kanban

We’ve devised Personal Kanban to adapt to any system you might currently use (unless of course your preferred  system is utter chaos). The only two rules are visualize your work and limit work-in-progress (WIP). PK’s main goal is to get you to write things down and begin to watch how and what you complete.
Last week, [...]

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 [...]

Undertow and Churn: Workflow isn’t Always Linear

In Personal Kanban, our primary step is to define our workflow. Workflows tend to be linear, and often look like this:
Waiting –>Doing–>Done
or
Outline –> Pre-writing –> Draft –> Edit –> Final Draft
or
Backlog –> Coding –> Testing –> Integration –> Release
Unfortunately, life isn’t always that straightforward.  A few weeks ago on Twitter, I was asked if it is [...]

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.

A WIP Workout: Pomodoro and Personal Kanban

Pomodoro is the workout: Personal Kanban is the trainer.

Visualizing the Flow: Polar-State Based Personal Kanban with Habit Trackers

James Mallison shared a bit of insight and I’m passing it along.
In a recent post he discussed issues very close to what I call visualization and flow. He begins with a little story about Jerry Seinfeld:
A couple of years ago there was a little story doing the rounds about a bit of productivity advice from [...]