Why Kanban? Agile Project management tools in interior design
- Lana Hazelton
- Sep 14, 2023
- 5 min read
Updated: Nov 6, 2023
The difference between a Kanban Board and a standard Task Board.
Post 2. “Agile in Interior Design, Dealing With Large Projects” series. The series answers the question of how to automate and scale the interior design process without loss of creativity.
One of the keystones of Agile project management is the transparency of the workflow. Agile encourages using information radiators - digital or physical boards showing project progress, and visible to all project participants. The Kanban Board is one of these tools. How does it look, how does it work, and why is it different from a standard Task Board or To-Do List?
Using Kanban Boards allows the team to view the complete picture of the project, and see the progress and process from start to finish. It also allows everyone to see how individual tasks are interconnected and how individual performance helps to improve the project outcome. What is even more important it allows monitoring the team workload and balancing customers' demands with the teams’ capacity.
Working as a subcontractor with different construction, engineering, architectural, and other companies, I noticed that often Kanban Boards are get mixed with Tasks Boards. Let’s look at the examples and find out the difference.
Here is an example of the Task Board. The standard task board tracks three parameters: work to do, work in progress, and work done. Cards with the tasks move through all three columns during the project life cycle. Surely it gives an idea about the project status, but what to do if you find yourself in a situation where tasks are piling up in the “IN PROGRESS” column and do not move to the “DONE” column? I have been in this situation myself and witnessed other teams struggle with the same problem.
Why it happens? The first reason, in my opinion, is a poorly designed workflow. I am planning to talk about this topic in upcoming posts. For now, I just want to mention that organizing the workflow is equally important for both Task Boards and Kanban Boards.
The second reason is pulling work from the “TASKS” column to the “IN PROGRESS” column too soon. Deadline pressure, customers’ demands, and other reasons trigger initiating multiple tasks simultaneously. That leads to multitasking and team overloading and eventually to burnout and missed deadlines.
The good news is you can prevent it using a Kanban Board instead of a Task Board.
Here is an example of the Kanban Board which our team uses for managing our interior design projects. This board is similar to the standard Kanban Board for managing IT projects, but we adjusted it for our specific needs.
We still have “TASKS”, “IN PROGRESS” and “DONE”. But we also have “REVIEW / APPROVAL”, “CORRECTION”, “BLOCKED”, and “FAST TRACK”. And you can see the numbers above “IN PROGRESS”, “CORRECTION”, and “FAST TRACK”. How does it work? One project - one Kanban Board. All project tasks move through all columns during the life cycle of the project, except for the “BLOCKED” column. If you are lucky this column can be always empty, but from my experience this is unlikely:). We use Trello for organizing our Kanban boards, but It can be just an office whiteboard, marker, and yellow stickers.
“TASKS”
In the “TASKS” column we put all the work on the project, divided into the smallest parts.
“IN PROGRESS” From “TASKS” we pool 4 cards and move them to the “IN PROGRESS” column. We move not more than 4 tasks simultaneously. Below I explain why exactly 4. Let's name two of four tasks to better illustrate the process. For example “RCP of (Reflective Ceiling Plan) for Lounge on Level 1” and “Material board for Lounge on Level 1 ”.
“REVIEW / APPROVAL”
Once the task is completed it moves into the “REVIE / APPROVAL” column. It means the task is waiting to be reviewed by other project participants. For example, with the Reflected Ceiling Plan, we can wait while mechanical engineers decide whether the RCP accommodates all technical requirements. In the case of the Material board, we can wait for the customer’s approval of the color scheme, and so on.
“CORRECTION”
Sometimes card moves from “REVIE / APPROVAL” to the “CORRECTION” column. And after corrections are made the card goes back to the “REVIE / APPROVAL” column again. We keep in the “CORRECTION” column not more than 3 tasks.
“DONE”
After getting approval, the card finally moves to the “DONE” column. “BLOCKED” The card appears in the column “BLOCKED” if the task wasn't completed in the assigned time due to the obstacle. Let’s say in the case of the Material Board the supplier did not provide the samples, and the task can not be moved to the “REVIE / APPROVAL” column. Moving tasks to the “BLOCKED” column helps the team (and especially the Team Leader) timely direct the effort on removing the obstacles and preventing tasks from hanging in the air.
“FAST TRACK”
This column is for tasks that require immediate attention and have priority over the rest of tasks. For example, a mistake was found in the approved drawings and needs to be corrected ASAP since construction work already started and construction progress depends on the compilation of this task. THE NUMBERS Now let's talk about the numbers in “IN PROGRESS”, “CORRECTION”, and “FAST TRACK” cells. These numbers represent the limit for work in progress (or WIP) and directly address the problem of team overload. These numbers are individual for each team and based on the size of the team, team velocity, task complexity, and other parameters. You will have to try and adjust to find your numbers. The main idea is not to pool more work from “TASKS” to “IN PROGRESS” than your team can process simultaneously. You need to prioritize work and work on things that are more important first. Based on our team size (5 people) and based on the organization of our workflow we can work simultaneously on a maximum of 4 tasks “IN PROGRESS”, 3 in “CORRECTION” and only 1 in “FAST TRACK”
In conclusion, the Kanban Board is one of the most effective Agile project management tools for interior design project management. It offers distinct advantages over traditional task boards, by providing a comprehensive view of the project and a balanced approach to the workload. Kanban boards allow teams to optimize their performance without limiting creativity.
There are a lot of resources available online if you are interested in exploring Kanban boards and customizing them to suit your unique requirements. I'd like to recommend an article that I found particularly informative: https://blog.trello.com/kanban-data-nave. It's an excellent starting point if you're considering giving Kanban a try.
Best of luck! Feel free to share your feedback in the comments below to let me know if you found this post helpful. Additionally, I'm interested in hearing about any other topics you'd like to explore further.
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