Lots of tickets in our READY column make a jumbled mess. We’re not sure how close we are to completion or what ticket to pull next, Breaking your work into projects in the READY column lets you see both. You can sequence work (pull the rightmost ticket), see how many tickets are left in the project, and see what projects are ripe for rapid completion.
You can also create better strategies. For example: Sunday can be the day to nuke the “CLEAN GARAGE” project. But maybe Saturday is the day you look over the tickets and figure out what you need to get from the hardware store for both the CLEAN GARAGE and the RENO BASEMENT projects. One trip to the hardware store gets you a power washer, broom, and shelving for the garage and a drill and sledgehammer for the basement.
Without having the tickets in orderly swimlanes, we instead would have a disordered jumble which is much harder to manage.
This is the final post in the Personal Kanban Tips series. You can read all the previous posts by clicking on the links below.
DONE COLUMN: How Does Your Work Make You Feel?
DONE COLUMN: Daily / Weekly Review
PROMISES COLUMN: Make Good On Your Promises
THE NEW STUFF COLUMN: What’s Just Come In?
READY COLUMN: Ticket Aging
