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If you want to do Kanban right, double down on making it possible to design actual Kanban workflows. Pretty ticket UI with checklists and GIFs must be secondary

If you want to do Kanban right, double down on making it possible to design actual Kanban workflows. Pretty ticket UI with checklists and GIFs must be secondary to this goal. Things that most actual Kanban flows have that no one has built into a decent product[0]: - Nested columns in lanes - Rows for class-of-service - WIP limits (per lane, per column, and per class-of-service) - Sub-boards for meta issues The actual content of each work item is the least important part of Kanban; it could be a hyperlink for all I care. Kanban is about managing the flow, not managing the work. [0] Please prove me wrong if there is such a product out there!

kitotik 9y ago
A million upvotes if I could. It’s always surprising to me how many “lean” and “agile” productivity tools completely focus on the artifacts and seem to have skipped the core concepts entirely.
gregoriol 9y ago
Maybe YouTrack from JetBrains, these folks got some things right.
- lucisferre 9y ago
  Except UX as a whole.
  - gregoriol 9y ago
    Like most of their IDEs, it's not about UX but about features. And on that point, they have done a lot! Having used it for some projects as an alternative to JIRA, Trello, GitLab boards, and a few others that I tried, I think it's not perfect, quite hard to use for non-tech users, but much better than most of the alternatives. The number of details/settings available is great compared to Trello or GitLab. The pricing/hosting is great compared to JIRA. The non-tech usability is much better in JIRA and Trello, but for a tech team, it has many small things/shortcuts like ones you already use in their IDEs which is really great. There are hundreds of tools like this, and I tried maybe 20 or 30 of them; the thing is, there is no perfect tool out there, and there won't be as use cases for such a tool can be extremely different! YouTrack gets a lot of points right for a tech team from my experience though.
- tomfanning 9y ago
  Apart from them taking 7+ years to not implement the tiniest of UI features https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/JT-4526 https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/JT-4526
The_Fox 9y ago
The product I've been working on the last few months has all the things you listed, mostly: http://cwkanban.com/ http://cwkanban.com/ . It's been a huge help to my own team's workflow. But it's not general-purpose like Wekan or Trello; it's focused on workflow for managed IT and at the moment only pulls ticket data from ConnectWise, software for managed services providers.
- GordonS 9y ago
  > all the things you listed, mostly Not trying to be a dick, but that sounds... kind of weasely.
  - The_Fox 9y ago
    I suppose- mostly I'm unsure to what extent "sub-boards for meta issues" makes sense when card data is drawn from an external source, as in our product.
repeek 9y ago
Have you tried LeanKit[0]? [0] https://leankit.com https://leankit.com
jimstr 9y ago
KanbanFlow, https://kanbanflow.com/ https://kanbanflow.com/ , is pretty serious about their Kanban implementation. Worth a look!
- bostonvaulter2 9y ago
  Not open source though (from a quick glance)
  - devrandomguy 9y ago
    I agree that this is important. Optimizing and integrating the tools is a fairly significant part of my work, when I am leading a small team. Webhooks and a plugin framework are decent compromises, but there are so many times when I just want to dive into the code to increment a constant, or subclass and extend a method that doesn't have an externally accessible hook.
- edoceo 9y ago
  You just got them a customer :)
- robotmay 9y ago
  I think that's the first Kanban interface I've seen that actually looks enticing. There's something very satisfying about the spacing.
- JohannesH 9y ago
  I really like kanbanflow as a product. For example they also have a pretty nice integrated pomodoro timer with interruption logging. However the reason I moved back to Trello was the interface was a bit old-fashioned, and I found it hard to get my team on-board on kanbanflow wheras it was really easy to get them going on Trello.
shortstuffsushi 9y ago
What is "class-of-service?" I'm not familiar with this term.
- elviejo 9y ago
  In Kanban boards are represented a swim lines (rows). They represent a type of work (urgent, fixed date, standard) Or a set of policies (solve in 4hours or less) For the different tickets... It's the most powerful tool of the Kanban Method
gramakri 9y ago
Kanboard has it all
- psy-q 9y ago
  It has rows and WIP limits, but does it have the rest?
btown 9y ago
Targetprocess.com had all these features - I loved swim lanes for projects - but the UI was unusably slow (clearly not designed with an app framework at the core) when we tried it two years ago. I've been looking for something better ever since.
- tablet 9y ago
  It is faster now. Take a look at Fibery as well http://fibery.io/ http://fibery.io/
j1elo 9y ago
To be honest, Wekan is a pretty weak implementation of Kanban: - No Search (https://github.com/wekan/wekan/issues/552 https://github.com/wekan/wekan/issues/552) - No WIP limits (https://github.com/wekan/wekan/issues/783 https://github.com/wekan/wekan/issues/783) - No Swimlanes (https://github.com/wekan/wekan/issues/955 https://github.com/wekan/wekan/issues/955) It's a bummer because in the current state, Wekan doesn't really provide much real management value. I really wanted to use it for Kanban, because it's one of the flagship applications of the fantastic Sandstorm cloud platform (https://sandstorm.io https://sandstorm.io), to introduce some colleagues to both concepts at the same time... but I guess I will only show them about the later. Well at least it implements subtasks (checklists)!
- xet7 9y ago
  Hi, I'm current maintainer of Wekan. Yes, Wekan does not have those features yet. Anyway, Wekan is being actively developed and features added. Wekan is friendly community driven project and welcomes all contributions. Some have commented on Wekan GitHub issues that they prefer to use Wekan, because some others project management tools are overkill, or don't have the same usability as Wekan. It depends on use case.
  - regularfry 9y ago
    Thing is, it's specifically labeled a kanban board. WiP limits are fundamental to kanban. They're why kanban works. People may prefer it to other tools; that's fine, but it doesn't mean it's not missing the point by not being an actual kanban board implementation.
    - xet7 9y ago
      Yes, Wekan has Kanban Board, but not full Kanban Method yet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_board
lmm 9y ago
I find rows counterproductive; they make it less obvious how full the board is, and don't help make better decisions. By all means sort each column in priority order so that people picking up a new task know which to pick up first; that's a lot less intrusive and covers the important use case. Likewise sub-boards and meta-issues. If we're doing agile properly then each card represents a user-facing deliverable. Allowing meta-issues encourages doing the wrong thing. Limiting work in progress I've achieved by having people assign themselves to cards, and questioning those who are on multiple cards. In the cases where we're violating our work-in-progress limit, I'd rather have the board reflect reality than not.

kitotik 9y ago

A million upvotes if I could. It’s always surprising to me how many “lean” and “agile” productivity tools completely focus on the artifacts and seem to have skipped the core concepts entirely.

gregoriol 9y ago

Maybe YouTrack from JetBrains, these folks got some things right.

lucisferre 9y ago
Except UX as a whole.
- gregoriol 9y ago
  Like most of their IDEs, it's not about UX but about features. And on that point, they have done a lot! Having used it for some projects as an alternative to JIRA, Trello, GitLab boards, and a few others that I tried, I think it's not perfect, quite hard to use for non-tech users, but much better than most of the alternatives. The number of details/settings available is great compared to Trello or GitLab. The pricing/hosting is great compared to JIRA. The non-tech usability is much better in JIRA and Trello, but for a tech team, it has many small things/shortcuts like ones you already use in their IDEs which is really great. There are hundreds of tools like this, and I tried maybe 20 or 30 of them; the thing is, there is no perfect tool out there, and there won't be as use cases for such a tool can be extremely different! YouTrack gets a lot of points right for a tech team from my experience though.
tomfanning 9y ago
Apart from them taking 7+ years to not implement the tiniest of UI features https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/JT-4526 https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/JT-4526

The_Fox 9y ago

The product I've been working on the last few months has all the things you listed, mostly: http://cwkanban.com/ http://cwkanban.com/ . It's been a huge help to my own team's workflow. But it's not general-purpose like Wekan or Trello; it's focused on workflow for managed IT and at the moment only pulls ticket data from ConnectWise, software for managed services providers.

GordonS 9y ago
> all the things you listed, mostly Not trying to be a dick, but that sounds... kind of weasely.
- The_Fox 9y ago
  I suppose- mostly I'm unsure to what extent "sub-boards for meta issues" makes sense when card data is drawn from an external source, as in our product.

repeek 9y ago

Have you tried LeanKit[0]? [0] https://leankit.com https://leankit.com

jimstr 9y ago

KanbanFlow, https://kanbanflow.com/ https://kanbanflow.com/ , is pretty serious about their Kanban implementation. Worth a look!

bostonvaulter2 9y ago
Not open source though (from a quick glance)
- devrandomguy 9y ago
  I agree that this is important. Optimizing and integrating the tools is a fairly significant part of my work, when I am leading a small team. Webhooks and a plugin framework are decent compromises, but there are so many times when I just want to dive into the code to increment a constant, or subclass and extend a method that doesn't have an externally accessible hook.
edoceo 9y ago
You just got them a customer :)
robotmay 9y ago
I think that's the first Kanban interface I've seen that actually looks enticing. There's something very satisfying about the spacing.
JohannesH 9y ago
I really like kanbanflow as a product. For example they also have a pretty nice integrated pomodoro timer with interruption logging. However the reason I moved back to Trello was the interface was a bit old-fashioned, and I found it hard to get my team on-board on kanbanflow wheras it was really easy to get them going on Trello.

shortstuffsushi 9y ago

What is "class-of-service?" I'm not familiar with this term.

elviejo 9y ago
In Kanban boards are represented a swim lines (rows). They represent a type of work (urgent, fixed date, standard) Or a set of policies (solve in 4hours or less) For the different tickets... It's the most powerful tool of the Kanban Method

gramakri 9y ago

Kanboard has it all

psy-q 9y ago
It has rows and WIP limits, but does it have the rest?

btown 9y ago

Targetprocess.com had all these features - I loved swim lanes for projects - but the UI was unusably slow (clearly not designed with an app framework at the core) when we tried it two years ago. I've been looking for something better ever since.

tablet 9y ago
It is faster now. Take a look at Fibery as well http://fibery.io/ http://fibery.io/

j1elo 9y ago

To be honest, Wekan is a pretty weak implementation of Kanban: - No Search (https://github.com/wekan/wekan/issues/552 https://github.com/wekan/wekan/issues/552) - No WIP limits (https://github.com/wekan/wekan/issues/783 https://github.com/wekan/wekan/issues/783) - No Swimlanes (https://github.com/wekan/wekan/issues/955 https://github.com/wekan/wekan/issues/955) It's a bummer because in the current state, Wekan doesn't really provide much real management value. I really wanted to use it for Kanban, because it's one of the flagship applications of the fantastic Sandstorm cloud platform (https://sandstorm.io https://sandstorm.io), to introduce some colleagues to both concepts at the same time... but I guess I will only show them about the later. Well at least it implements subtasks (checklists)!

xet7 9y ago
Hi, I'm current maintainer of Wekan. Yes, Wekan does not have those features yet. Anyway, Wekan is being actively developed and features added. Wekan is friendly community driven project and welcomes all contributions. Some have commented on Wekan GitHub issues that they prefer to use Wekan, because some others project management tools are overkill, or don't have the same usability as Wekan. It depends on use case.
- regularfry 9y ago
  Thing is, it's specifically labeled a kanban board. WiP limits are fundamental to kanban. They're why kanban works. People may prefer it to other tools; that's fine, but it doesn't mean it's not missing the point by not being an actual kanban board implementation.
  - xet7 9y ago
    Yes, Wekan has Kanban Board, but not full Kanban Method yet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_board

lmm 9y ago

I find rows counterproductive; they make it less obvious how full the board is, and don't help make better decisions. By all means sort each column in priority order so that people picking up a new task know which to pick up first; that's a lot less intrusive and covers the important use case. Likewise sub-boards and meta-issues. If we're doing agile properly then each card represents a user-facing deliverable. Allowing meta-issues encourages doing the wrong thing. Limiting work in progress I've achieved by having people assign themselves to cards, and questioning those who are on multiple cards. In the cases where we're violating our work-in-progress limit, I'd rather have the board reflect reality than not.