Kanban Boards for Non-Software Projects

I get asked all the time, can Uzility be used for non-software projects? The follow-up question is usually:  Can you change the column headings, add new columns?

The concept of Kanban boards works great in many situations, you don’t need to be building software to use a kanban board to track your progress.

Kanban Boards for Family Activities

My wife and I use a Uzility kanban board to track projects around the house. She has an idea that we need to remodel the kitchen, and I think we need to paint the family room. Over time we just establish a list of ideas that go into a column called Backlog. We then sort the backlog based on budget, available time, and time of the year. We have some pretty epic stories in the back log, like remodeling the kitchen, and some quick and easy items like Wash Windows, or rearrange the furniture in the family room.

We event have a second kanban board for family trips or activities. If my wife has an idea take the family on a ski trip to Canada, she just throws it in the list, and if I want to go fishing in August, I throw it in the list too. We sort the list, determine what we have time for, and what we can afford. If we don’t have time, or budget for a bigger trip, we just move a more affordable or shorter trip up the list to take the place of the one that is blocked.  This has worked great, and has certainly improved the overall communication around trip planning.

With uzility we can change the columns to represent different workflows, for instance on the trip planning board we have the following columns Dreamboard, Planning, Booked, and Done. It is surprising how many trips or activities we have been able to move into the done column since we started using the system.

With either of these family boards we don’t have daily stand-up meetings, but we do have occasional backlog grooming and planning were we discuss and decide on what is next and how we are going to get it done.

See Also:

• Uzility
• Kanban Board
• Backlog

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