The Simplest 3-Step workflow for your productivity: A guide to effectively using Kanban boards

Working agile and the Kanban methodology are incredibly effective tools that are gaining popularity year after year across various industries. For most of you who work online and provide services, it’s a daily routine. For others, it’s something they will surely get to know and fall in love with, placing them on a trajectory of organization and visual transparency in daily work.

There are several products on the market with varying degrees of functionality that you can use or not. In ESTEAMATE, you will find only what your daily freelance life requires, and the Kanban module is closely integrated with other parts of the application, ESTIMATIONS, TIME ENTRIES. You will learn how to get started with Kanban in ESTEAMATE from our manual.

This simple flow will help you recognize and assess where your task is and at what stage it is located. All it takes is a bit of systematics and consistency. In our opinion, it’s a matter of developing a habit.
See how the simplest flow looks and don’t hesitate to “pimp” it!

Here’s our recommended setup for your board. Remember that this is just our proposal; each industry, flow, and the number of elements in your process will determine its appearance and the number of columns. That’s why it is one of the most flexible and efficient methods for executing and managing projects.

Workflow

This simple flow will help you recognize and assess where your task is and at what stage it is located. All it takes is a bit of systematics and consistency. In our opinion, it’s a matter of developing a habit. See how an example flow looks, from which you can start, and don’t hesitate to adjust it every day. You will see that it will change with every change in your business and your business environment.

To Do

This is the place/column where all tasks that initiate the project
are located. Treat it like a bag of all the tasks that need to be done.
Everything that is a new task you will implement goes here. This column
provides a clear overview of what is still left to do and helps in prioritizing
your work. You can arrange tasks from top to bottom, prioritizing their
completion.

In Progress

This column contains the tasks you are currently working on.
When you start working on a task, move it from "To Do"
to "In Progress" and start tracking your time. If you need
to pause your work, simply stop tracking and move the task
back to "To Do" until you’re ready to resume. This allows you
to get an accurate record of the time spent on each task,
even if you switch between different tasks throughout the day.

Done

Every freelancer's favorite column! "Done" is where completed
tasks are moved. Once a task is finished, move it here to mark
it as complete. When all tasks in the project are in this column,
your work is officially finished, and the project is ready for delivery.
This column serves as a satisfying reminder of your progress
and motivates you to continue

Do you know why it's recommended to break project tasks into the smallest possible pieces?

So that you know at what stage your project is and what to tell the client if they ask. You can glance at the board and see what is "Done," what is still waiting in your "Backlog," and what you are currently working on. Sounds like a conversation between a client and a professional?!

Also, so that you don’t ruin your psyche by launching the same task every day, which is named after your project and gives you a sense of endlessness. In Agile, there must be rewards. You end your day with a smile on your face and satisfaction that you burned through 3 tasks today. Yes, you can go for a beer.

Remember to break your projects and tasks down into the smallest possible pieces. This will become the gold of your satisfaction with the projects you execute and your work.

When does Kanban become very useful?

The answer is simple: more clients, more projects, greater diversification. We talked about this in the article Establishing Hourly Rate: How to Do That Properly?

As you can guess, this means more switching between tasks, leading to greater dispersion and less concentration. Kanban will be your invaluable support and provide a clear, visual layout that keeps everything in a high degree of transparency. By breaking down each stage of the project into smaller parts, you can execute tasks step by step, avoiding mistakes and situations where you might overlook something. So, are you convinced? You must give this a try!

When we started our business, we learned this approach, and in hindsight, there's no magic in it. It's simple, and the only thing you need to remember is to be consistent!

Kanban requires consistency. Become persistent and cultivate the habit of creating tasks and moving them between columns.

When you do this, you will not only see fewer mistakes, a faster workflow, and your transparency before the client, but also the ability to scale. ESTEAMATE is already prepared for this stage. Its architecture has been designed to build interdisciplinary teams. We will write about this soon, and there will be [link here].

Kanban is a powerful tool, and thanks to our experience working in this methodology and hundreds of thousands of completed tasks, we have prepared it to be even more useful. Remember that your workflow should work for you, not the other way around.

Join us today and take control of your projects with ESTEAMATE, and be sure to try what you won't find in other products. Remember that in ESTEAMATE there is full symbiosis and complementarity between modules that can also be autonomous services, such as Kanban or Invoicing.

Have fun at work and reach out if there's anything you'd like to improve.
This is your application, and you will find only what you need in it!


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