Leadership Communication Strategy – Kanban Board

In my role as the Media Commons University Park Coordinator I oversee the day-to-day activities of four wage staff consultants. Three of these consultants work in other buildings at other Media Commons locations so I don’t get the opportunity to work with them in person and directly everyday. We do have individual one-on-one meetings every other week and a weekly group meeting and with these meetings we keep each other informed on our various activities and projects.

What was lacking from the meeting strategy was a sense of continuity. Yes, we have a rolling meeting agenda with meeting notes. Everyone reports on the status of the various projects they are working on. But we didn’t have a mechanism to visually track the progress of these projects. I’m a visual person, I work in multimedia. I needed something that clearly stated where a project was in the development cycle at any given moment. And I wanted it to be physical, not digital. I’ve learned in this age of instant online communication, Google Docs, and Yammer that while it is easy to keep record digitally (saves paper, easily accessible by everyone) they are also easily forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind. Disposable. I wanted something big and physical and omin-present so we couldn’t hide from it. So I came up with something that takes up half of the wall in my office.kanban

It’s a loosely-adapted Kanban board system. It was originally developed for “just-in-time” production and logistical tracking for Toyota, but in researching it I’ve seen it used for a variety of other things like software development. We’re using it for project management.

The rules are easy to understand. Any and all new ideas for projects from anyone at any time can be written on a sticky note and added to the “Project Queue” vertical row. Sticky notes are color-coded to indicate if the project best fits in a certain type of category (Marketing, Instructional, Events, Spaces, Organization, and Website). At our weekly meetings we will first attempt to clear the Project Queue. All new ideas are evaluated by the group (Is this something that fits with our mission? Do we have time for it?) and checked against the “Goals” vertical row (current goals that all projects must be checked against are “Accessibility” “Don’t mess up (much)” “How does this HELP the student?” and “Innovative”). If the group (with input from myself) agrees that this is a good project to work on, it moves horizontally across the board into the “Elaboration, Discussion, Acceptance” vertical row. Moving from “Project Queue” to “E/D/A” is more of a first pass, but in “E/D/A” we dig into all aspects of the project from start to finish and define a structure and roles for it. It may sit in “E/D/A” for some time until we’re ready or have time to begin actively working on the project. Once work has begun the project moves horizontally again into “Production” while it is actively developed. Clearly this is our bottleneck as we have many projects in “Production” at any given time. A project that is basically finished moves briefly into “Deployment” as it awaits some form of publishing, whether it be to our website or printed out or whatever is the most appropriate distribution method for the project. Finally, when “Deployment” is achieved it moves into the “Done” row.

Every semester we evaluate the color-coded projects in the “Done” row to get a snapshot of how we spent our time. This overview of projects-by-category can tell us if we’re spending out time appropriately given the mission of our group. It can also contribute to strategic thinking, as we may have spent significant time on marketing ourselves one semester and realize we need to spend the next semester developing new instructional material. There is also a spot for any projects that need to be expedited above the board. All work stops on all projects if a card has been added to “Expedite” until “Expedite” is cleared. This accounts for any projects that show up from on high, sometimes out of the blue. We mark each card with an E if it comes from “Expedite” so that at the end of the semester we can evaluate how many expedited projects there were. If there are too many expedited project you might have a problem with your chain-of-command or you may be accepting too many projects that are outside of what is supposed to be the normal scope of your group. This can lead to important conversations.

The Kanban board has done wonders for our group cohesiveness, trust, and efficiency. It inspires ownership of projects from group members and a feeling of accomplishment when they can move their project from one vertical column to the next. I purposefully don’t put the names of those working on a project on the card. These projects belong to all of us and while one person might take the lead, any of us can contribute to any project. There is still accountability for projects within the group meetings, but this also prevents too many of one name showing up in the “Done” row, or not enough of another.

The system was universally adopted and we’ve been using it successfully for the past five months. I think this was a successful demonstration and implementation of a form of leadership in communication.

2 thoughts on “Leadership Communication Strategy – Kanban Board

  1. Pingback: I Want Change! – Unbelievable Promises Ministries

  2. mdc15

    This is really cool! I can see how having the visual reminder during your meetings can inspire motivation and generate ideas. I may have to try this at home for our many home improvement projects 🙂

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