When I built my first Kanban board for my team we relied on a magnetic whiteboard, 3×5 index cards, and sticky notes. It was a behemoth but it got the job done as long as the sticky note adhesive and scotch tape held up.
Without fail, each morning a snowfall of sticky notes or index cards could be found lying on the floor in front of our board. Occasionally we'd lose a few that either got whisked away by the cleaning crew or hitched a ride on the bottom of someone's shoe.
We would do a daily reconcile against our documentation for the project vs what was physically left on our Kanban board. If anything was missing we broke out the sharpies, index cards, scotch tape and sticky notes and got busy re-creating the missing pieces of the puzzle.
This worked but it was a pain in the neck and a hit to our productivity.
Eventually we solved the problem when we converted to a digital Kanban board that we managed online. It worked even when team members were working from home and we stopped losing cards. It even allowed us to use our whiteboard for brainstorming and discussions instead.
I figured this might be helpful for some of you out there that are looking for a simple to use, cost effective digital tool for running your own Kanban board. So… I created a DIY video on how to set it up yourself. I've posted it on YouTube so it's free to enjoy.
Check it out and let me know what you think.
