The Power of the Card

Within the enterprise collaboration space, you may not think of Pinterest as a leading-edge technology platform, but its impact has been very powerful in that it introduced many people to the concept of the card as the forefront of many productivity and collaboration solutions. What is it about the card that makes it so powerful?

It’s because there is intent behind the items pinned to someone’s board — people create a Pinterest card for a purpose: a way to collect images and designs around a favorite theme, to share ideas with friends, or to provide a visual scrapbook of news and visualizations. Every card has context to the cards around it, and to the board upon which they are pinned.

For many end users within the Microsoft ecosystem, the introduction of Microsoft Delve may have been their first time working with a card-based user experience within the enterprise. The concept is not brand new within collaboration solutions, but the use of cards as a way to encapsulate all relevant data, conversation, and documentation is becoming increasingly popular — because it clarifies the intent of the artifacts and conversations contained within a card. In a recent discussion with KanBo CEO, Michal Sobotkiewicz (@michalsobot), we discussed the value that a card-based collaboration system brings to the enterprise:

Simplifying Complex Projects

One of the strongest value propositions of the card-based interface is its ability to clarify even the most complex projects or initiatives.

Within the KanBo solution, which uses the concept of KanBan lists and cards to break projects into a simple, straight-forward process, you have the ability to capture everything needed to complete a task within a single card, and then drag-and-drop those cards into whatever order makes sense.

As priorities change, KanBo allows you to reorder the cards in a way that allows you and your team to quickly identify what needs to happen next — and avoid get side-tracked by tasks that are not yet clearly defined or that cannot be completed without additional input. What’s more, you can ask questions, and @ mention team members, requesting the information and documentation necessary to complete a task. A card becomes the place where discrete tasks are accomplished. Once completed, the entire history of the task can be archived, giving you a history of the task and what it took to complete the work — to be stored as part of your knowledge management system.

Learn More About KanBo

I am a huge fan of the card-based collaboration UX, and have started using the solution to manage all of my projects.

It has replaced my need for tools such as Microsoft Project and Trello, and has made on-boarding new employees much quicker, because of it’s intuitive features and deep integration with Office 365 and the Microsoft Office productivity suite. If you have not yet seen KanBo in action, and would like to see how the solution can quickly add value to your SharePoint on-premises or Office 365 environment, I encourage you to sign up for the free trial, or request a personalized demo.