I'm not going sit here an boast of being some kind of expert on Kanban or guru of personal productivity. I'm just a Project Manager/Leader who is always keeping his eyes and ears open for newer or better ways to manage time or work. I believe you should always try to eliminate non-value-added processes, resulting in a positive impact of customer satisfaction, while reducing support costs. How do you do that? You get it done as effectively and efficiently as possible. I recently completed Getting Things Done by David Allen. It was an interesting book. Though I use paperless processes to "get things done", David offered one bit of advice that resonated with me. To advance a task or activity to more of an actionable conclusion, he said to ask "What's the next action?"

This parallels what I do with my Kanban (task) board. I currently have 4 columns: Backlog, Work In Progress (WIP), Blocked, Done. When a prioritized task can not be worked, I put the task card (user story) in the "blocked" column. I then ask myself the question. What's the next action? Without asking yourself that simple question, your task may be blocked longer than necessary. You have to understand there may be 3 or 4 steps you need to complete before you can unblock your task and get it back to WIP. So, ask the question.

As to not ignore the obvious, I recommend you write your tasks in a standard user story format.As a [perspective], I want to [activity], so I can [desired outcome]

It doesn't matter if you use a physical or virtual Kanban (task) board. I recommend following 3 simple rules:

Keep your tasks visible
Keep your tasks limited
Keep your tasks actionable

For those out there using Kanban for Lean Project Management, let me sing the praises of Zen. Zen is a tool that applies the ideas of the Toyota Production System (commonly known as "lean" principles) to project management. Whether you already practice lean in your organization, you want to set up a lean process, or you just want an easy and effective way to manage your process, Zen will work for you.

Since I started using Zen back in July, my productivity increases has been astounding. I used to think multi-tasking was the best way to deliver value. I couldn't have been more wrong. Instead, I now limit my Work In Progress to only 3 and only focus on 1 at a time.

Though I wrote about this product back in August, I wanted to give a formal product endorsement. Getting started is free of charge. Once you begin using it on your projects, the cost is reasonable and scalable. The Zen creators focused on what really matters, and designed an open-ended and easy to customize product. They don't overwhelm you with metrics and force you to try to figure out what matters. Instead, they track just a few high-value indicators such as cycle time and lead time.

If you've already implemented lean ideas in your organization, Zen can easily be used to replace a manual kanban board and spreadsheets, and has all the features you would expect to find in a lean project management tool. If you think I'm a fanboy, you'd be right! I love this product. Check out www.agilezen.com