With more and more software developers trying to find ways to better build software, we have seen many new methodologies and processes being used for managing workloads, tracking development progress and more. Perhaps one of the most interesting adoptions for companies looking to speed up their development has been the use of kanban boards for tracking work in Agile or Scrum systems. Kanban came about as part of the manufacturing process at Toyota and proved very valuable for them.

We use kanban boards all over Red Gate, for everything from software development to marketing campaigns, to books we're publishing. It's kind of amazing. However I hadn't thought about using one personally until I saw this piece on LifeHacker (a related piece on visualization as well). It's hard to know how well this would fit for me to manage my workload at SQLServerCentral. While we use a kanban board for a few tasks, like Stairway Series, I think this would be a bit complex for the variety of tasks I deal with on a regular basis. I suspect I'd need a number of kanban boards, a separate one for each type of work, and then I'd be trying to somehow manage my workload between all of them.

However I do think that for software development, and for a limited set of tasks that you want to track and organize, kanban is a good way to easily visualize the workload. I also think this could be a good way to manage your career learning. Set a list of things to learn, break them down into tasks (watching videos, reading an article, writing a CTE) and then track your progress across the year.

Having a visual reminder can be motivating, as long as you can make progress and see work moving through progressions. If not, it can be another source of pressure or stress that you avoid. However it's an interesting technique that might work well for teams that are focused on a single set of work.