Generic KANBAN Example

Hello All, 

Today I Have a treat for you. That is, within most M365 standard license models we have a great set of options for creating a simple  KANBAN board. If you‘re unfamiliar with this funny sounding term, or its benefits, we’ve got you covered. To breakdown everything, I will split this post into two-parts. In part one, I’ll will briefly explain the benefits of centralizing your teams tasks in a single coherent board. And in part two, we’ll cover the M365 tools that we can take advantage of to make life easier once we have our task board setup. Let’s get started!

TLDR (Too Long didn’t read) with regards to the best M365 tools for KANBAN 

M365 KANBAN Options Comparison Table

Because I value your time, I’ll summarize everything on this section. If I were to make a generic recommendation on which M365 app we should use for our task list would be as followed. 

1. A Microsoft List, using the Lists app, and taking advantage of the standard Templates is probably the best overall solution. Easy setup, and robust options for scale. Everything mentioned as a weakness in the next line item is a pro for this solution.
2. Microsoft Planner is great with easy setup and a low learning curve. Be warned, there is no way to lock the board down, or undo someone else’s edits. That means, you can literally lose the entire project with no way to recover it should someone make a mistake, or decide they want to add their own buckets. As of writing, no recycle bin, no options to undo.  
   • Related, see the the Planner blog post to learn more on how Planner is Merging with Microsoft Project – ⁠https://aka.ms/thenewplanner⁠
3. Microsoft Whiteboard – I would not recommend using Microsoft Whiteboard for running projects. It doesn’t scale. However, do not discard this app just yet. Here’s the thing, during a project kick-off, troubleshooting session, or discovery phase, one can easily spin-up a Whiteboard instance using digital post-it-notes. From there, you can have all the experts layout all the required tasks easily, and organize them in buckets with haste.

So if you are still here with us, lets talk about centralizing team tasks…

Part 1 – High-Level What is a KANBAN board? 

While I admit, I am not a certified agile coach. However, I do manage tasks for multiple people who do not report to me. I would say, KANBAN has been a step in the right direction in terms of organization. Disclaimer, it will not take the place of a full time project manager, or well structured product roadmap with fully defined projects. In most cases, I do not have that luxury, so a KANBAN board is better than the alternative, which is reviewing thousands of emails of people bickering back and forth, not really knowing what action items are for me, if any!

Shown at the beginning of this post, a KANBAN board originates from the Agile KANBAN project manager approach (we won’t cover all that). In it’s simplest form, A KANBAN board, is what the name implies, a giant board (can be physical or digital) which has columns or ‘buckets’ that denote their status. Each item or post-it-note listed in the column is the task at hand. So in practice, one lists all their tasks out in the backlog bucket, then move it to the in progress bucket when it’s started, and down the line accordingly. Where this gets useful, you can see what your team is working on in a single view and pause or help where necessary if you have a blocked bucket. There are lots of ways to work this, and you can use a board for personal use too if that makes sense. But the key thing I like about this board in our remote hybrid world is, we have lots of digital streamlined tools at our disposal that just make life a little easier.  

Tips for scale with KANBAN 

Below are some platform agnostic bullet points from a boots-on-the-ground perspective, 

• The KANBAN board is the status update! Do not have meetings about status updates. The meetings should be about decisions made related to problems posted in the blocked bucket. If everything is on schedule, cancel the meeting. Give us our life back!
• You are doing this wrong if you have invested time in getting the tasks on the board and you don’t have a high-level view on the status because people aren’t updating their tasks. Folks not updating their tasks is not a technology problem, that is a culture problem. There is no tool or process you can put in place if the culture isn’t onboard. And if that is the case, you have to do a better job selling the value or tweaking the process to find a balance between too much data input on their end and getting the data needed on your side. This board should result in less meetings, a reduction in email, stable processes because the support documentation needed is on the task that anyone can locate. This all takes time and willingness to refine for the long haul. You may say, “this is a lot of work.” and it certainly is. My point, if your team doesn’t have a centralized tasks manage list of some sort, you will be forced to use many different siloed methods to communicate the same information I am proposing we centralize. Centralizing the data scales, and hopefully results in a well oiled machine in terms of teamwork. Lastly, having all that you need in one place improves everyone’s quality of life in the micro, and reduced staff burnout/employee turnover in the best case.
  • Related – Why Employees Who Work Across Silos Get Burned Out

Part 2 – M365 KANBAN options

Essentially, we have a three-way death match between the M365 apps. Specifically, we have a SharePoint List, the Planner App (excluding the premium features), and the venerable, Microsoft White Board App.

SharePoint List 

Standard SharePoint List Example

First, a brief explanation. A SharePoint, little “l” list is a feature of any SharePoint site where one can create a robust collection, or list of items that can serve lots of functions. A To-do list, Bug Tracker, Asset manager, etc. Pretty much anything one can do an Excel, or a competing task management tool, you can do with a SharePoint list plus more since this feature resides on SharePoint, which is heavily integrated within the broader M365 platform. Automations, workflows, notifications, sophisticated approval processes, it’s all here!

But SharePoint is a large, complicated feature-rich environment. So, what if one just needs the basic features of a list for organization, but doesn’t necessarily need to see all the other stuff offered on a full-blown SharePoint site? Well, Microsoft released a stand-alone app titled, Lists for this very reason. The aforementioned, Lists app (note the capitalized “L”) is literally the same thing as the little “l” lists SharePoint feature mentioned earlier, just offered as a standalone app, with a streamlined UI making it easier to get started.

This app lowers the bar of entry for those who just need to start organizing items as soon as possible, but may someday need the back-end robustness we’ve come to love about modern SharePoint site.

So what do you need a list for? 

Pasted below are some out-of-the-box templates that I have found to be quicker than starting from a blank slate for my list building needs. But as I said  earlier, there is a learning curve to Lists because it can simply do more than the contenders. Actually, I went into great depth talking about task management here comparing the pros and cons. But I will summarize. The top perks of this app, 

1. Scales well because you can lock down the list to read-only. 
2. Multiple views (what’s late, what’s in the sprint for this week, KANBAN board) it’s all here. 
3. Easy Integration and Automation into the other M365 Tools. 

Here some out-of-the-box Templates that you can use to get started

Microsoft Planner 

What’s left to say, MS Planner is fast, easy to setup and lends itself nicely to basic task management. I cannot stress the word, ‘basic’ enough. For many years I used Planner with a small team and then one day, magically my team grew from 3 people to 14 people and my Planner board became a wreck. People were adding boards left and right, completed tasks that had mission critical knowledge were deleted, all the due dates and labels were jacked up, I could not lock it down, nor could I restore it to it’s prior state. It was a mess. Ever since, I have been reluctant to make a recommendation for this app. I don’t even know of a way to enable simple version control. At some point this year Planner will get further integration into Microsoft Project so I am optimistic some of my laments will be addressed. But until then, tread lightly with this one. 

Whiteboard

Microsoft Whiteboard example with Loop components embedded

Please don’t get the wrong impression. I actually like the Microsoft Whiteboard App. One nifty underrated feature is, like a good neighbor, with every teams meeting, in a pinch whiteboard is there. Super fast and flexible. I think it’s great for brainstorming, story-boarding, Mind mapping, and throwing all the ideas out there in one place to get consensus. It’s easy to use and works well for the most part. But using it as a full-time tool for managing tasks is an exercise in insanity for the same reason running multiple physical boards for projects would be. And that is not what this app was meant for so it’s no surprise that it’s no competition compared to the other players. That being said, Whiteboard does have a little trick up its sleeve. That is, out-of-the-box integration with Microsoft Loop. From there, one can make a KANBAN Whiteboard template, with Loop embedded and iterate on meetings having all the tasks roll-up to a single view in Planner (which is the back-end of the Loop Tasks Component). I would say, take this for a test spin as I don’t recommend Loop or Planner for serious task management. But I hope Microsoft continues to build on this idea. I like the idea of starting with a blank canvas and then plugging-in necessary functions where needed. Whiteboard does this well. 

Tips for scale using Lists 

• Setup a weekly batch reports using the native SharePoint alerts to show what has been moved to done or modified to inform the community of the progress your team is making.
• Use the ‘@‘ mentions in the comments to yell foul when you put something in the blocked bucket. Example, ‘Hey @boss, I am set to have this task done, but I do not have an account to said server. I cannot proceed until that is done’. With the comment posted on the task when moved into the blocked bucket, this gives a manager or Scrum master a heads-up. Then the meetings can be about decisions. And that is my Segway into the next point.
• Learn about and respect custom fields and meta data. This can serve you well once the task is done. With the proper investment, this task list can become quite the nifty archive should something break down the line, and you need to reference the dev notes from years ago. 

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