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 sleepless nights worrying about that stray comma I didn't catch in time for today's deliverable, or that broken link that needs tending to before tomorrow's presentation.Yeah, I sweat the small stuff. Freud even has a word for me.Yes...that word.I however, prefer to see myself as "uber-organized."So when an aggressive December 29th client deadline threatened to Grinch my Christmas Eve and Day celebrations, I thought I had things covered. After all, my guest list is etched in stone, my menu is planned, and 90% of the gifts on my list were purchased by November.And they were wrapped.Yay, me.Then why - I asked myself - did I feel as if my combined personal and professional workflow was pulling me under?Considering the amount of vowels in my name, missing Christmas is not an option. Somehow the holiday and the client deadline had to peacefully co-exist.A quick glance at my Personal Kanban explained my anxiety. I was drowning in a maelstrom of projects that were not only contributing to my WIP but were competing with each other. With personal deadlines set for the 24th and 25th, and a client deadline set for the 29th, seasonal expectations became pressing obligations.This expectation-based WIP extended beyond normal everyday existential overhead. Emotions and expectations combined to create holiday stress. And despite the days nearing closer and closer to the 25th, those holiday task cards piling up were barely making it out of my backlog.Sure, I had those tasks on my Personal Kanban. But things got messy. How could I limit my WIP with tasks sharing deadlines and very few hours to complete them?With less than a week to go, I needed a dedicated board to track the particular workflow for tasks that "came due" on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I need a way to schedule out this process, visualize my progress at every step, and ensure even the tiniest subtask was not overlooked. Because who wants to have to improvise on Christmas morning with a ___ and a ___ because they forgot to do ___? Not me.On the shortest day of the year, my biggest enemy was time. I had a Christmas mission, and so I needed a (very) special "Do" Date-ban.With just the fridge, magnetic hooks, and some holiday note cards, I am now set for the next 3 days. I grouped tasks by their Type (Snowflake/Shopping, Tree/Preparation, Stocking/Cooking) and their Do/Due Date (the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th respectively). The Do/Due dates became my WIP. That let me easily batch projects such as make up guest bedroom, bake struffoli, and brave the line at the post office.So with each day leading up to Christmas Eve, I've given myself a WIP of 3 things for each day - 3 tasks of immediate "value," with itemized subtasks listed inside. Each morning I take the 3 cards off the fridge which correspond with that date, and that's my WIP.Being able to boil down a seemingly insurmountable number of tasks to 3 cards per day tames an otherwise overwhelming task load, and allows me to enjoy the holiday rather than sweat the small stuff.

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

Info Pak3 Personal Kanban Design Patterns

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Modus Cooperandi is pleased to announce the release of its third Personal Kanban InfoPak. InPersonal Kanban Design Patterns: Inspiration to Discover Your Flowwe present a series of patterns for individuals as well as for small "teams." Among the topics discussed: approaches tailored to specific users (i.e. children and authors) and situations (i.e. non-linear work); ways in which productivity tools such as GTD and Pomodoro extend the value of your Personal Kanban; how "coping mechanisms" such as retrospectives shed light on work patterns that have helped or hindered productivity in the past.For best results and access to links, please download the presentation. As always, please feel free to embed, distribute, and/or comment on this or any of our other InfoPaks.

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,

  1. ways to manage the WIP of multiple projects in one kanban,

  2. ways to manage projects with different collaborators, and

  3. better ways to integrate a calendar.

To be sure, these are not easy requests to satisfy.For all of my projects, I have been using Agile Zen as my primary Personal Kanban tool. I have found it to be the best designed, easiest to use, and most powerful online tool available. It likewise gives me the statistics I need to help me understand the "way" that I work, which ultimately helps me to make better informed decisions.Unfortunately however, it doesn’t lend itself to the aforementioned demands, because those demands break some pretty fundamental laws of Lean.  Such demands ask us to:

• abandon a central workflow (by integrating multiple workflows),

• acknowledge a time-box constraint (by introducing a calendar), and

• decouple WIP from a team and relegate it to the individual.

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So in an attempt to manage multiple projects, I've begun to use  The Big Picture. It isn’t perfect, but with its unique interface this free tool gets us a little closer to handling "the messy" than any other online tool I've come across.

Multiple Projects

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Pictured to the right is the main page from my Big Picture. We see that I have four simultaneous projects that are contributing to my WIP: Instant Karma, Modus, Music, and Personal.Each of these projects has its own workflow, set of collaborators, and type of demands. If we double click on one of the balls we get to see the kanban for that particular project.In this first example, we see that music can go from:idea --> in progress --> mix down --> review --> publicationTasks might also have subtasks or elements to be satisfied.  For example, the song “Presence of Mind” is in review and is awaiting feedback from John, Tonianne, and Chris.For the Instant Karma workflow, we see something very different -  a totally different workflow and totally different types of tasks.This system is inherently flexible.

Multiple WIP and Calendar Integration

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This system manages WIP by actually moving current WIP into the calendar.In the image to the right, I’m dragging a task from one of the task lists to the calendar in the upper right corner.  This brings up the calendar screen where you can begin to manage your day – your messy day filled with multiple tasks from multiple projects with different workflows and different teams.Color coordinated by the various projects, the day now is filled with tasks.  This is your WIP.  You can move it from day to day until it is complete. When it is complete, you simply check the tick box.You can rearrange them. The time really isn’t important but rather, it’s the activities during the day which are vital.  This is your shared WIP column.At the beginning of the next work day, you can revisit each of the projects, pull the appropriate tasks from one stage to the next, and then select the WIP for that day.

Multiple Users

The Big Picture allows you to share individual projects with other users. They can add tasks, complete them, and change the workflow.This means that people see only the tasks you want them to see, and can work tightly with their teams.

What This is Missing (Blessing and Curse)

This is missing performance metrics, detailed backlog tracking, user management, and firm definitions of what is a task, what is a project, and what is a point in your workflow.  The Big Picture offers almost no firm definitions, it simply allows you to create an arbitrary container and place things inside it.What this means is that it won’t give you some of the high-end features you want – but it also means that this simple system can help visualize some of the most complicated workflows.  Additionally, it means you need nearly zero time to set up your management system, and that you can be part of a plethora of projects and still manage them coherently with the other people participating.

What This Has

In addition to its flexibility, this system also has a completely unique interface. It’s both colorful and functional, making the user experience enjoyable. I believe this is an excellent launching pad for experimentation and innovation.Will it replace Agile Zen for me personally? No. I need the metrics, the serious database, and the superlative UI design that Agile Zen gives me.Can I see myself using The Big Picture for quick projects or projects with weird workflows, like recursive or multi-variant workflows?  Absolutely. The utter free-form of The Big Picture makes it too attractive an alternative when the bizarre raises its head.

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

Throw out the schedule

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 using flow to manage GTD projects and someday/maybe lists can be beneficial.  In a future post I'll describe how this also translates into flowing actions in a context, such as the work place, and limiting the work in progress (WIP) of these actions.Again, for the basics of GTD I recommend the material linked from Wikipedia.  The basics of Personal Kanban can be found on this very site.

What are "Someday/Maybe" lists and Projects?

Getting things Done (GTD) has a number of horizons above any given action: Projects, Goals, Focus, Vision & Purpose.  These are aimed at providing yourself goals to aim for and to test your choice of actions against, so that you aren't just "doing", but are actually moving toward a goal, and these goals join up to achieving larger objectives in life.In GTD, anything you wish to achieve that has more than one specific  action is considered a project.  For example, even arranging a meal out at a restraunt could be considered a project as you will have to go through actions similar to: who to invite, confirm who is available, when to go, where to go, book a table, confirm booking with invitees and go.  The reason why this definition works is, actions could be in any number of places in your personal productivity system, be it a calendar or a list, and when they are done there needs to be a reminder in your system that acts as a touchstone so that you can ensure a next action is available to move forward towards an envisaged successful outcome.Any objective that requires action, yet does not make sense to undertake as-at-now, yet you feel this is something you would like to do in the future is considered a candidate for the "someday/maybe" list.  Someday/maybe is reviewed at regular intervals to see if an item needs pulling into the current project list, or, if only one action is required, a contextual action list or placed on a calendar.  Why have a someday/maybe list?  Someday/maybe lists assist in clearing your head by placing all these wishes and thoughts into a trusted and regularly reviewed system.

Managing Someday/Maybe & Projects by using a Personal Kanban

Rather than have multiple flat lists, one for projects and one for someday/maybe with no interaction between them other than once a week if not longer, lets use a Kanban to represent both!  The example bellow includes prioritisation, a step for the initial brainstorm of what success looks like and what actions may be required, the doing part (working), and the done part.  All with WIP limits for focus.

Lets do a quick illustration:

1. You get a new project at work called "Project A" that is going to require several actions, so you place it on the backlog as you have plenty to do already.  The backlog acts as your someday/maybe list.

2. A space becomes available on your "Should" lane, which prompts you to look at your backlog for possible projects to start prioritising, you assess the items against your current Goals at work, and select Project A.

3. Over time, Project A moves from "Should" to "Ready", and before undertaking the work, to the elaboration lane for envisaging a successful outcome and working back to the next steps from where you are.

4. Once Project A moves to the "Working" lane, you place the next action discovered as part of elaborating into the appropriate context list or date on the calendar.

5. Actions get performed overtime, and eventually the successful outcome is achieved and Project A is placed in the "Project Goal Achieved!" lane.

Clearly, due to the variance in size of knowledge work or personal projects it's difficult to set a limit on "working", so I suggest you experiment with this number, and try to keep it as low as possible for focus.Going back to the purpose of someday/maybe, it is possible you have single discreet actions on your backlog now, so it is worth moving those items to an appropriate context list or calendar entry when the time comes that you wish to do something about them.  Personally, most of my Someday/Maybe items were and are projects, so I don't mind the backlog being closely associated to projects.