Planeban - A Quick offline kanban for in-flight work
As a matter of fact, yes.
I boarded the first leg of my flight from Seattle to Hanoi. I had 19 hours of flying ahead of me. I also had a backlog, and no wifi. Agile Zen was not going to be useful for me. So, I opened Open Office Writer and made a quick table.
I had a series of things to do, but with a few constraints. The first was that I was likely to fall asleep at some point, so I wanted to knock out the most important task first. The second was that I had a list of commitments I’d made over the week and needed to make good on them. Fortunately, I have a 17 hour battery and a 4 hour battery as backup, so I had enough juice to cover me.
In no particular order I wrote down my work. I had 14 papers to read for Hanoi, so I began with those. I knew that not finishing them first would mean I’d read them when I was too tired to retain anything. Then I went to work on the feature sets for the new software projects. Finally I ended with blog posts (of which this is one).
In the end, I had a full accounting of what I’d done – so I could make sure that the files and work completed in-flight made it to the appropriate people and after-action steps were taken.
I want to point out again, you don’t need special hardware or software, you just need to visualize your work, limit your WIP, and prioritize.
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Say!
I like Kanban!
I do! I like it, Sam-I-am!
And I would limit WIP in a boat.
And I would limit WIP with a goat.
And I will limit WIP in the rain.
And in the dark. And on a train.
And in a car. And in a tree.
Limiting WIP is so good so good you see!
So I will limit WIP in a box.
And I will limit WIP with a fox.
And I will limit WIP in a house.
And I will limit WIP with a mouse.
And I will limit WIP here and there.
Say! I will limit WIP ANYWHERE!
I do so like
Limiting WIP and Kanban!
Thank you!
Thank you,
Sam-I-am
Strange how a simple title can get me started.
Best Regards,
Derek Huether
http://huecubed.com
Derek that is pure awesome.
This is what (for me) makes Personal Kanban so successful, the ability to set up and work it with whatever tools are available to you at the time.
Hm, I’m wondering how this could be useful in a lot more situations. How much easier is the world when you are working against difficult constraints? Not being able to make a lot of choices makes it easier to get done the fewer things left that are possible.
If you have few enough choices written down, then this three-column list simplifies into a one-column list. The thing you are doing is the thing you are doing. The thing you haven’t done yet hasn’t been crossed off yet, and the thing that is done is crossed off. The challenge is to make the “work in progress” part of this small enough that you can know what it is that you are doing right now without having to write it down.
@Edward
Yes, but what you are describing is simply a list. The beautiful part of the Kanban is that it takes the focus out of the “to do” and puts it into the “doing” and “done” perspectives. Ending your day with a bunch of stricken lines (thus nothing) isn’t satisfactory for me. I much prefer to see the wall of tasks that are in the “done” column!!!
@Ed … @Eric reminded me that I had been remiss in replying. I’m sorry about that.
For me, crossing things off means a few things.
1. At the end of your work you have a piece of paper filled with crossed out work that is now trash. If you use something that tracks state, then when you are done you have a record of work complete and the order in which is was completed.
2. Psychologically, crossing out work reinforces that work is to be done and forgotten – and that work is to be completed quickly rather than thoughtfully
3. To Do lists don’t reinforce limiting your work-in-progress, which I’m kinda keen on.
We do have a section in the book called “To Do Lists are the Spawn of the Devil,” that goes deep into why To Do Lists are nasty.
Having said this, it would be just fine to set up something like this:
…………..In Process …… Done ……. Notes
Task A
Task B
Task C
And note the state of the task, allowing you to mark in process and done with tick marks and not actually moving the text around.
No estб seguro de que esto es verdad:), pero gracias a un cargo.
Gracias
Kicker