have defined and limited the meaning of the term “Project” previously in this productivity blog, I do not believe it is a sin of insistent to do it again. Behind that word, a result that is expected or desired is achieved so that, in order to achieve this, more than one action or task must be carried out.
You do not need to have too much imagination, or too much vision to glimpse the depth of this concept. If we look at our incomplete work, we have been entering the emails a few hours or a few days ago and are pending review, we could do a mental exercise on the things we have parked, because we do not know how to start them … Thinking about The project concept, we would realize that almost all of them would enter within their definition.
Things as varied as the next vacation, the renovation of a company vehicle, the surprise that I want to organize for my mother’s birthday or the elimination of the 10 least profitable clients, we can consider them as projects. In any of the previous examples, and if I ask myself why I want to do it, what I want to do, or what I want to achieve, I will find that, behind these answers, there will be a hidden desire, a result that I want to look for and what is going to Require to carry out more than one action to achieve it.
We can find ourselves facing the situation that we must manage or resolve that desire, but that we lack sufficient clarity to be able to start it. What we should do is think about what we want to achieve and how we have to do it. It is a new job on which many knowledge workers are unaware that they should do it with assiduousness, even more so, whenever a new project arrives.
“If a project is still in its head, it still has to stay for planning” David Allen.
The next question is that, once we have already defined all the actions, or tasks, that we must carry out to achieve that desire that we pursue, decide how we will manage them.
Initially, the users that followed the GTD methodology thought that the correct way to carry out a project was the preparation of it in sequential order. That is to say, they put in a correlative order the tasks to realize and only the one that occupied the first position passed with its context to the list of following actions. In this way only one project action was entered into the possible field of vision. Once this was completed, it was when the next task was to be activated, and so on until the project was finished.
In my opinion, this way of planning and managing the tasks of a project is not the correct one, at least in the majority. I do not doubt that there are some procedures in which performing actions with a strict predefined sequence, is correct, but this is not so in a broad majority of cases. And for these major situations, I advocate the use of the Kanban method or, at least, the idea that underlies this way of raising the realization of the projects.
Kanbam is a Japanese word that comes to mean something similar to visual cards. This method was created in the Toyota company and was used to control the progress of work in the production chains.
The greatest advantage of this system is that it allows, in a very visual way, to be fully aware of the actions of a project, how its compliance is developing and what components are key for its development.
“Instead of worrying in advance, think and plan ahead” Winston Chirchill.
As a disadvantage, I am aware that more than one person can happen to him, by having the full visualization of all the tasks to be performed, and given human nature, he may be tempted to perform the tasks that most like, or the simplest, Or those that are better known or dominated, to the detriment of the important ones, or those that will require a greater effort, thus falling into the temptation to postpone them irrational. In spite of this possible inconvenience I bet doubtlessly by this method, and I affirm it by my experience, since it is the way that I use habitually for the management of my projects.
Nowadays, there are a number of computer applications that support you to work your projects with Kanban. Depending on each need or, from each one, the number of columns that we have the one we can use may vary, but basically and the simplest one only needs three of them.
To manage it correctly, with just paper and pencil we could do it, you could also use a board and it is very typical and easy to do it by using the post-it classics. With them, we only need a surface to go by sticking them and moving them from one column to another.
You have to draw or create as many columns as states where the task can happen. For example:
On hold, in development, in analysis, in process, in evidence, unassigned, completed, etc. It is convenient, although not necessary, what will depend on the complexity of each project, to define how many tasks, at most, can have in each phase the work cycle, because in this way we will avoid an optimism that could lead us to saturate a phase already That, consequently, its effectiveness is lost in order to maintain the clarity necessary for the correct development of the project.
The aim of this visualization is to make clear the work to be done, how is its progress and whether it has been completed. “Our actions speak about us as much as we do about them” Mary Anne Evans. Personally, I use only three columns: pending, in Course and done. In the first they would be from the beginning all the tasks that must be done to complete the project. The second would be the tasks that have been decided to do them as soon as possible. And the third will obviously pass the tasks once finalized. As sure as possible, a large number of projects that work together should be compatible, should each be passed to the column of “en Course “the tasks that, with prudence and realism, we consider of feasible achievement.
Thus, we will avoid drowning in a cloud of pending things that, often, because of that excess of optimism that floods us with our ability to complete and complete tasks, can end up saturating the focus of attention needed to decide effectively on the next task to To execute, so that by this excess we get to discourage before making the right decision. The “Done” column, although it seems that it does not contribute anything, fulfills the function of showing progress at work and, in this way,
It helps to feel the sense of reward and motivation that provokes knowledge and see that the tasks are being finalized. In the same way, reviewing this column can draw conclusions about the appropriate, or not, rhythm and progress of the work done and also offer an opportunity to check the proper choice of the chosen tasks. With Kanban you have the opportunity to place order In the projects, and to let it be the professional criterion of each one to decide what is most interesting to do so that they advance with the appropriate rhythm and direction. It allows to visualize in a very graphical way the workflow and the situation of each task.