The Gamification of Project Management (Kanban Boards)

With a plethora of (free) project management applications readily available it would seem that managing projects can be a pretty straightforward task. However, to ensure project success there are several important factors that need to be considered. This includes project complexity, team experience with project management, discipline, and trust in the process.

So what’s the best approach when you’re managing complex projects with a team that doesn’t quite understand project management, believe in the process, or trust it? 

The answer is kanban boards.

A kanban board is a workflow visualization tool that represents project tasks, workflows and their progress while maximizing efficiency.

HOW TO USE IT

When I create a board, I make sure that the following things are covered:

• The board has columns that show progress broken up for the life of the project starting from the left of the board to the right stating, ‘Not Started’, ‘In Progress (less than 50%)', ‘In Progress (over 50%)’, and ’Done’

• There are cards that are assigned card ‘owners’

• There are labels on each card, perfect for filtering around specific buckets (ie. marketing, operations, Q1, Q2, sales, etc.)

• There are checklist items that go deeper in to what is required to finish project tasks

• There are due dates for card completion as well as due dates for task completion

• There is the prioritization of cards to reorient the team to what is most important

WHY USE IT? 

There are several reasons to use a kanban board which I will share below. But the most important reason to use one is for how easy it is to pick up and contribute to a project without a lot of detail (unless required). 

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

Accountability/Ownership

When creating project cards, it is imperative to create cards that are assigned to an owner. Furthermore, the checklist items within the card should also have assigned owners. Why is this important? By being assigned to a specific card or task, owners feel responsible for everything associated with the card. This ownership becomes really important when status meetings are held because the card owner should be fully prepared to provide any information on the cards they ‘own’ as it is arguably their tasks to manage.

Better Visibility/Transparency

With team members owning cards and checklist items, it is easy to hold people accountable. It also starts to become easier to figure out how difficult certain tasks are and if additional resources need to be involved. The best way to unearth this is to discuss cards and checklist items (and their progress or lack thereof) during status meetings. 

Being a card owner creates an intrinsic feeling of responsibility. Ideally, team members will come into a status ready to talk about their cards and ready to ask for help if their cards are significantly missing deadlines or there doesn’t seem to be significant progress. 

Communication is key here. The status meeting is an opportunity to get updates on a project and push to move the tasks further along. It is not a place to solve and find potential solutions. Project/task owners should feel open to communicating about progress of their cards at all times beyond just during the status meeting.

Feeling of accomplishment / Progress

The gamification of it all. How satisfying is it to see that card creep its way from the left of the board (beginning) to the right (end)? To see a project card and all those checklist items forever placed in the ‘Done’ bucket is always a great feeling and it's a fun way to show progress. 

There are many different ways to manage a project. I’ve found that Kanban is the easiest to get a team on board that doesn’t quite ‘get’ project management. Spin up a board and team members will immediately feel ownership and responsibility for getting the work done.