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Team Management Made Easy With KanBo

Effective team management is at the core of organizational efficiency and sustainable productivity. 

Without managing teams, departments, and their respective tasks, organizations tend to lose focus and most of the effort and time are wasted on understanding the objectives and how to achieve them. On the other hand, if teams are managed in an optimal way, their sole focus is on achieving the shared goal which positively impacts the bottom line.

That’s why organizations have become increasingly aware of the significance of team management and are looking to deploy tools and processes that ensure teams are managed effectively. KanBo is one of the leading team management tools that is simple enough for startups and functional enough for large scale enterprises.

KanBo – The Twenty First Century Team Management Tool

When it comes to management, there are a wide range of tools available. But in order to offer versatility, most of the tools often turn into a poorly organized set of features that no longer remain user-friendly. KanBo is exactly the opposite as it offers the right balance of reliability, performance, features, and user-friendliness. Here’s a detail guide on how to use KanBo for effective team management.

List – Information and FAQs

When you first the Team or Department Board, you will see a number of lists stacked horizontally side by side. The first list contains all the basic information that’s required to work efficiently. This list is available all the time so team members can get back to it whenever they are confused or want clarification. The list could have all kinds of information from introduction of all the team members and how to work to FAQs related to setting up a home office and meetings.

The list may also contain valuable information that might be required for working such as login information and training materials. What information should be a part of this list? Well, this can vary from organization to organization. As a general rule, it should have all the information that most team members are looking for.

List – Administrative

One of the major challenges of a modern workplace is to ensure effective collaboration across the team. That becomes quite difficult when you aren’t aware about someone’s absence or when they would be available. That’s exactly the issue that the administrative list attempts to solve by mentioning the availability, or lack thereof, of team members who might have called in sick or are on a vacation.

Knowing the availability of all the team members allows for better collaboration as employees can work around dependencies ensuring all the projects remain on track.

List – Current Things

As the name suggests, this particular list highlights all the tasks and projects that are currently underway or need to be worked on. This enables both managers and team members to keep an eye on the progress and ensure that everything is delivered on time. Since each list contains a separate card for each task, you can see who is responsible for every task and when it is supposed to be delivered.

This list is especially useful for project managers who need to keep an eye on the team all the time as it gives a bird’s eye view of overall progress.

List – One Time Projects

This list contains the information about projects that are not recurring. For instance, there might be tasks that are associated with COVID-19 pandemic and its impact which may not need to be repeated. Just like the list of current things, this list also contains a separate card for each task or project so you can see who is responsible for every task and when it needs to be delivered.

List – Work from Other Departments

This particular list ensures that managers as well team members stay aware of all the tasks whose scope extend beyond their own team. This list shows the sub-cards that contain updates about the tasks from other teams that are relevant to your department. Once again, this allows you to collaborate better and work around dependencies to ensure deliverables are completed on time.

View – Where We Stand

This view shows you all the tasks and projects according to their status which you can see in the form of three lists – Not Started, In Progress, and Completed. Managers as well as team members can find out what they need to work on and what’s currently pending. This type of view is important because when you select “All”, it shows all the lists and cards/sub-cards according to the structure and not the status or work progress.

If you observe the filters, you will see that information lists are not shown in this view because they are not about work progress. Here you will see all the things from the perspective of progress which is especially important for project managers and team leaders.

View – Calendar

Calendar view allows you to see the cards in the form of timeline along with the start and end date of a particular task or project. Similarly, you can see that there are tasks on a specific date which need to be accomplished on the very day. The cards are colored in the calendar view and you have the option to assign color to every card based on its First Label as well as Status depending on the monitoring perspective you desire. If you don’t want any colors, you can select ‘nothing’ and then all the cards shown will be white.

View – Users

This particular view sorts and categorizes the cards by users so you can see the latest updates from every team member. This allows managers to see the work load every employee has. The Unassigned list shows all the cards that contain general information and aren’t associated with any specific team member.

Conclusion

There are no two opinions about the fact that most organizations today need to come up with a robust strategy for managing their business processes effectively. The lack of any business process management leads to poor progress monitoring which can further result in reduced productivity and overall operational efficiency.

KanBo provides a unique approach for organizations to design and implement tailored business processes using its cards and lists along with status roles which don’t only categorize and break down complex processes but keep every team member updated at all times.

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