Putting the Zone in Kanban Zone

The month of May 2020 will be all about gradually rolling out Summary Zone. The goal is to offer organizations the ability to visualize multiple boards in a single view, with advanced filters and sorting options. We have built Kanban Zone to handle Portfolio Kanban and this continues to support that direction.

Today’s change – Exposing the column states on boards

In order to combine cards from multiple boards on a single Kanban board, we are making the column states much more visible across Kanban Zone. The first time you can set a column state is under the board editor because each column that can contain cards must be associated with a “state” (To Do, In Progress, Done, None). Learn more about the column states…

Although these column states have always been in Kanban Zone, we never exposed them clearly on boards (only in reports). The first noticeable change you will see is in the new look for boards that was launched this weekend.

Each column that can contain cards now shows the state color associated with this column. Knowing the state of each column when viewing the board will help you know when cards are entering or exiting one of these states. This visual indicator might also help you revisit your column states and fix a few of these on your existing boards.

These states are extremely important to measure and improve the flow of your work.

Above is the Flow report that has always used these column states. This cumulative flow diagram helps you see how your overall flow is evolving over time. Learn more about the Flow report…

Next change – Launching Summary Zone that relies on column states

As Kanban Zone continues to serve larger organizations that are adding more members, cards, and boards, we needed a way to provide a summary view across multiple or all boards in your organization. The screenshot below is a Beta version of Summary Zone that we are still fine-tuning with customers in our Beta program.

We will be launching Summary Zone within the month of May and the final version might look a little different than the screenshot above. For example, we will be adding a new state called “Buffer” that some boards will want to insert as a way to track Wait time vs Touch time. Learn more about this concept in this blog…

We have also recently launched the ability to group your boards because that will be very helpful under Summary Zone. You will be able to select individual boards, groups of boards, or all your boards.

Bottom line – Kanban Zone is all about visualizing and improving your entire organization

Understanding, connecting, and visualizing these foundational column states in Kanban Zone will help you design the ideal solution for your organization. Our team of Kanban experts is always ready to schedule a coaching session to get you started on Kanban Zone, or explore new ways to take full advantage of Kanban.

Stay tuned for this month’s release notes. We will announce the official rollout of Summary Zone and more exciting news.