Feedback for Kanban implementation

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1

Hi folks :slight_smile:

i run a digital agency and we are using Kanban to work with our clients. We are offering different services (so we have different departments) like SEO, PPC, Conversion Rate Optmization.
In the past we used one kanban board per project/service for each client.

That means 1 client might had 4-5 different boards.

We cut it down and put the whole team into one kanban board and shared it with the client (much better).

Anyhow, my problem is now to understand the workload/planning. Like that’s still an issue for me and when i think about us as an agency i think effective and speed is one key element for our success.

SO (finally) i have something i would like to do and apply in asana. Only thing is…i don’t know if it’s as clever as i think it is or maybe garbage so i would love to gather some feedback from you.

1. I open one Kanban Board for each Team in the company

Conversion Rate Optimization/UX gets one Kanban Board, SEO Team one, Campaign Management one, Creative Production gets one etc.

Those have the columns: Backlog, WiP (work in progress), Review (internal), Review (client) Done

2. I create a shared Kanban Board for each Client

Those Boards are shared between the client and us and has two columns: Requests (from client) and Backlog (the work we’ve planned)

3. When planning happens we move tickets across those boards

With the priorities in mind and all the projects/tickets we start pushing tickets to the Team Boards from point 1, into the backlog what we want to do. Then we move the stuff with what we start to the WiP (work in progress) column. When the backlog in the team board gets empty we go to the shared client boards and pull tickets from there again.

I thought that’s actually a nice, easy and fast way to running agile and seeing the actual workload of a team.

What do you think?

My concerns/fears/thoughts

  1. Is this practical?
  2. What do i miss or might not see which can bring me issues?
  3. Should i add a strategy board per client to define the bigger picture?
  4. If i have this system running, how often are meetings needed?
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If I understand well, the client only sees Requests + Backlog. When you move a request to your own backlog, do you multi-home the tasks? If no, then the client looses visibility of it. If yes, then the client will have access to anything that is said on the task + all custom fields…

Can you share your goals and constraints? For example, you want clients to submit requests, you want them to be informed of progress, can they see all the details of the work being done on the request, do they need to see overall progress on the project?

3

Hi Bastien, thanks for your answer.

If I understand well, the client only sees Requests + Backlog. When you move a request to your >own backlog, do you multi-home the tasks? If no, then the client looses visibility of it.

Client would lose the visiblity true, but our clients are not really into checking every step of the progress. Especially as we are using one slack per client, so we have different communication touch points besides asana. Only thing i thought is maybe to put a “Review needed” and “Done” Column to the boards we share with clients so if something needs a review from a client it goes back to their board and when a task is done, they also can see it in their board.

Can you share your goals and constraints? For example, you want clients to submit requests, >you want them to be informed of progress, can they see all the details of the work being done >on the request, do they need to see overall progress on the project?`

Actually my goal is to have a much better flowing and understanding of the effectiveness of my team. I think the most important thing to our clients are: Results, Speed and Communication.

So i want to build this, to see how much workload a certain team has and that we work on the highest priorities without doing multitasking and too much work/projects in the same time.

4

So I’d say you need two things:

  • a requests project, feed by a Form or by email forward or by task creation directly by the client. Your team can pick work from this project by moving the task to another project and changing the status.
  • an approval request project where you have the client as a member and an approval status

Don’t hesitate to contact me if you need me to dig deeper into your workflow and find the correct setup!

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