KANBANERY

The missing manual

'Kanbanery the missing manual' by John Cielik-Bridgen @mr_jcb_1973

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Kanbanery the missing manual

Contents
Kanbanery 'supercharge your productivity'....................................................................4 Who is this manual for?.....................................................................................................4 Background Kanban.......................................................................................................5 The three rules..............................................................................................................5 Further reading..............................................................................................................7 The different Kanbanery subscriptions..............................................................................8 Mobile clients.................................................................................................................8 Getting started with Kanbanery.........................................................................................9 OpenID..........................................................................................................................9 Getting help.................................................................................................................10 Projects and workspaces.................................................................................................11 Desktop notifications...................................................................................................13 Customising your Kanbanery board................................................................................14 Your first Kanbanery project............................................................................................15 Kanbanery project templates.......................................................................................15 Customising your workflow..........................................................................................16 Adding tasks................................................................................................................17 Moving tasks................................................................................................................18 Minimising columns.....................................................................................................19 Save a project as template..........................................................................................20 The Icebox & The Archive................................................................................................21 Icebox..........................................................................................................................21 Archive.........................................................................................................................22 More about the task card.................................................................................................23 Important options.........................................................................................................23 Other options...............................................................................................................23 Ready to pull................................................................................................................24 Urgency.......................................................................................................................24 Deadlines.....................................................................................................................24 Activity indications on task card..................................................................................25 External bug tracking...................................................................................................25 So what's a blocker?...................................................................................................26 Per project options...........................................................................................................27 Task types....................................................................................................................27 Estimates.....................................................................................................................28 General settings..........................................................................................................29 GitHub integration .......................................................................................................30 Users and roles................................................................................................................31 Keeping up to date...........................................................................................................32 RSS.............................................................................................................................32 Email............................................................................................................................32 Keyboard shortcuts..........................................................................................................34 Reporting ........................................................................................................................35 Cumulative flow chart..................................................................................................35
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Lead and cycle time.....................................................................................................36 Task distribution...........................................................................................................36 Searching.........................................................................................................................37 Importing & Exporting tasks ............................................................................................38 AgileZen integration.....................................................................................................38 Export to PDF..............................................................................................................39 The Kanbanery API..........................................................................................................40 Related projects...............................................................................................................42 What if I don't like Kanbanery?........................................................................................43 Appendix 1 selected further reading on Kanban..........................................................44 The Kanbanery Team......................................................................................................45

Acknowledgements Thanks to Paul Klipp of Lunar Logic Polska, and Michael Heimbinder of HabitatMap.org for their valuable feedback on the first version. Future revisions will endeavour to include more of their suggestions any errors are the author's own.

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Kanbanery 'supercharge your productivity'

http://kanbanery.com/ Kanbanery is a flexible and customisable tool for managing projects and workflows developed by software development company Lunar Logic Polska. As well as the main web version, Kanbanery has iPhone and Android clients so that you can use Kanbanery wherever you are. The Kanbanery application is currently one of the most popular online kanban tools, used to manage everything from software development projects (its original purpose) to home brewing projects, with all kinds of different projects in between. If you need to get something done, manage a set of tasks, collaborate with colleagues, Kanbanery might just be able to help. The aim of this missing manual is to show you how.

Who is this manual for?

New users wanting to get started Experienced users wanting to learn more Managers evaluating Kanbanery

This manual doesn't assume any familiarity with kanban or project management, as you don't need to be an expert on either to benefit from using the tool. The manual is designed to get you up-and-running with Kanbanery quickly, and introduce you to the full range of features (many of which are documented for the first time here). Managers evaluating Kanbanery for their organisation are encouraged to read this manual, as many of the questions answered will assist in deciding whether the software is a good fit for an organisation's needs. It is hoped that there will be much that even experienced project managers will find useful in here. Tips from experienced users of Kanbanery have been included wherever possible. The primary focus is on the web based version of Kanbanery, though the material should be useful to users of mobile device clients as well. The Kanbanery API will also be introduced in a later chapter. Your feedback is most welcome, and future revisions will endeavour to incorporate more user feedback.

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Background Kanban
The name Kanbanery comes from a project management methodology called 'kanban' (a Japanese word meaning 'display board' or 'sign board'). Now, you don't need to know anything about kanban to use Kanbanery, so you could skip this whole section if you are not interested. But to get the most out of the tool, it sometimes helps to know a bit about the underlying theory. The method was originally developed in manufacturing to help track and improve progress on factory production lines, but the lessons learned can be applied to all kinds of projects. The three rules Kanban has just three main rules. 1) Visualise your workflow 2) Limit your work in progress 3) Measure and manage continual improvement That's basically all there is to it but how do these rules relate to Kanbanery, and how might they help you? 1) Visualise your workflow The main view of Kanbanery is based on a wall chart with tasks written on index cards stuck on. The author of this manual took part in the initial discussions of how the Kanbanery board should look and behave, and the aim was that the board should always try to reflect reality.

A real-life kanban board: To Do Doing Done

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So a task on the Kanbanery board is like a card on the real-life board. And as on the real life board, we can note information about the task, and move the card as the task progresses. Once we've completed the task, we can archive it away.

Kanbanery thus gives an 'at a glance' view of the status of a project or flow of work. We'll use the word 'project' for simplicity from now on, but remember that we could be visualising all kinds of different workflows, as mentioned above. As in real life, as well as moving the task cards across the board as they progress, we can move them up and down within their column to reflect their priority. We put the most important at the top, as that's what we are going to do next. 2) Limit your work in progress If there is one part of kanban that's hardest to implement and conceptualise it's this. By limiting work in progress, kanban aims to help you get more things completed. That sounds simple, but the reality of projects, bosses, clients and deadlines can often make this the hardest rule to stick to. Many of us have encountered situations in work or life outside the office where we feel like a juggler, concentrating on keeping several balls in the air at once as it were. Sometimes this works just fine but sometimes we drop them all. In kanban, we don't juggle. We try to limit what we are doing, and get the most important things done, one by one, with a clear focus. In Kanbanery this is reflected in the 'Work in progress' (or 'WIP') limit for the columns. In our simplest example, limit the 'Doing', to focus on getting things 'Done'. We'll look more at how WIP limits can be used in a later chapter.

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3) Measure and manage continual improvement If Rule (2) is perhaps the hardest to understand and implement, conversely Rule (3) should be the most readily accepted. There's a Japanese word that is sometimes used in kanban circles to describe 'continuous improvement' 'kaizen'. Whole books could be and have been written about the subject for now, think of the Kanbanery tool as part of your toolkit to improve. The very act of visualising a workflow is enough for some people to identify how it might be optimised. Kanbanery also provides a full suite of reporting and analysis tools for you to look more deeply at this. It's a very rare process that is perfect but kanban and Kanbanery aim to help you incrementally improve towards that goal. Note: Kanban a 'pull' system One other phrase you will often hear about kanban is that it is a 'pull based' system. The idea comes once again from manufacturing lines, where parts or stock should be 'pulled' through the system as it is required, rather than stacked and stored, incurring extra costs and loss of efficiency. In some sense the columns in the Kanbanery system are a bit like bins of parts, where we can reach for what we require next and pull them through our system. For the very simplest projects such as a To Do list, this might not seem relevant, but as soon as Kanbanery is used for a more complex process, it can help to remember that we are part of a system, where our our 'pull' of a task makes room for a new task earlier in the process (WIP again), and what we are aiming for is a smooth flow where bottlenecks are avoided, or at least identified. More of this later. Further reading There are lots of different resources should you wish to learn more about kanban see Appendix One 'Select reading list on kanban'. Some cities around the world also have 'Limited work in progress' societies, or 'Lean start-up' groups. Some of the main ones are listed in the Appendix. If you have a group that should be listed here, please let the author know.

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The different Kanbanery subscriptions

Kanbanery is a subscription based system. All the subscriptions are billed monthly, with no minimum commitment or notice period. The version you choose depends on the number of people working together on a project and how many simultaneous projects you need to have.

The free plan (a small link tucked away towards the bottom of the 'Pricing' page) offers one project board that two people can collaborate on 1. Whilst for some people this might be sufficient for all their needs, Kanbanery comes into its own when more users work together on more complex projects the pricing reflects this. According to Paul Klipp, 'the main goal was to avoid the dreaded per-user pricing model'. Mobile clients The iPhone client ('manage your kanbanery.com task boards easily from anywhere') is free: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kanbanery-premium/id423981129?mt=8 The basic Android client, allowing read-only viewing of Kanbanery project boards is free: http://www.appbrain.com/app/kanbanery-for-android/pl.project13.kanbanery There is also a premium Android client, that allows read-write access to project boards. At the time of writing this costs $2.86 http://www.appbrain.com/app/kanbanery-for-androidpremium/pl.project13.kanbanery.topsecretunlockerapp The iPhone client is developed and supported by Lunar Logic Polska, authors of the web version, whilst the Android client has been developed independently by Konrad Malawski (http://www.project13.pl/) using the Kanbanery API. The Android client is supported by Konrad rather than Lunar Logic Polska.
1There are no time limits or restrictions on functionality in the free plan 'Kanbanery the missing manual' by John Cielik-Bridgen @mr_jcb_1973
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Getting started with Kanbanery

The first step is to register for a new Kanbanery workspace. A workspace contains your Kanbanery projects, and you first need to name your workspace. Your workspace name will be the first part of the URL (subdomain) you use to access the system. Choose it carefully, as although it can be changed later, if you change the name, any old links to the board that you have created will not work, as the subdomain will be different.

Whoever first registers the workspace is the owner of any project created in that workspace. The authors of Kanbanery have assumed that this will generally make sense, that a business owner, a project manager or someone in a similar role will usually be setting up the workspace, and should automatically be able to collaborate on projects. Before you can use your new workspace, you need to confirm that you are the owner of the email address that you used to register. Kanbanery sends a mail to this email address with a link to activate your account. It has been known for this mail to get spam-filtered. The authors of Kanbanery don't have any control over this it's down to the mail system at your end. So before seeking help regarding a missing activation mail check your spam mail folder. You can have as many workspaces as you wish but the number of projects you have will be limited across all your workspaces. We'll see later that workspaces eventually provide a type of top-level navigation through Kanbanery. OpenID It's also possible to sign up using an OpenID from OpenID.org, Google or Yahoo. To add an OpenID for sign-in to your account later, go to 'Account OpenID'

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Getting help We mentioned above that there are occasions where an activation mail ends up being spam filtered. This is easy to resolve, but where can you turn on the occasions where you hit an unexpected problem? Kanbanery is an actively developed and supported application, and there are various sources of help and support. It's nearly always the case that you won't be the first to experience an issue so the first place to look for the answer to any issue you are facing is the community support forum: http://support.kanbanery.com/ Here you can find user contributed questions, solutions and tips, as well as official sources of support such as announcements and the official API documentation. Note: to post to these forums, you need to register a separate user account to your main Kanbanery account! The systems do not currently support a single sign on. Kanbanery has a Twitter account @kanbanery where official announcements and news are posted. Some help videos are available on the Kanbanery founder Paul Klipp's YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/agileactivist Kanbanery has a Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kanbanery/, although this is less active. Help tip Within the application many titles and text can be double clicked to edit:

Column title, WIP limit, task title and task description after double click

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Projects and workspaces

Your workspace is a top level grouping that can contain multiple projects. The number of projects that a workspace can contain depends on the Kanbanery subscription that you have opted for. If you are on a plan with a limited number of projects, remember that you can reuse or repurpose previously used boards. Alternatively, archive an existing project, as it will not then count towards the number of projects in your plan. If you are a freelancer, working alone, one project may be enough to manage your workflow and collaborate with one other person on the free plan. But as soon as you need to collaborate with more than one other person, it makes sense to pay for one of the premium plans.

If you receive the error above, you need either archive some existing projects, or upgrade your Kanbanery subscription plan. To upgrade, first click the 'Account' link, and then 'Subscription Plan' to navigate to this page:

As above, the size of plan that you need depends on how many concurrent users and projects you need to use. Remember that your plan can be upgraded at any time. A new project is started from the landing page of your workspace: click the 'CREATE NEW PROJECT BOARD' link. The various options and templates for project creation are covered in 'Your first Kanbanery project'
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The illustration above shows a workspace listing multiple projects of which the current user is the owner. There is also a prompt for the user to enter payment details for their subscription. When the user is not the owner, 'Settings', 'Archive', and 'Delete' do not appear:

Archiving a project removes it temporarily from your list of open projects (and it does not count towards your total number of projects within your Kanbanery subscription). No data is lost when archiving a project, and it can be restored by navigating through the 'See archived projects' link:

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From where it can be restored (subject to the maximum number of projects for your Kanbanery subscription):

When you log in to Kanbanery as a user with multiple workspaces, they will all be listed, and those that you own, you are able to also manage. Before you can choose a project, you will first need to choose a workspace. Those that you own will have 'Settings' and 'Delete' links.

Navigating workspaces from the project board top level Kanbanery navigation. The user is owner of 'johncb' and 'rtconnecttest' (hence the 'Settings' icon is visible) and collaborator on the other workspaces Desktop notifications Note that in the Google Chrome browser, there is an option to enable desktop notifications for your workspace. This option only appears for Chrome, but will work on Mac, Windows and Linux as tasks are added or moved within your workspace, a notification window outside the browser alerts you (so the browser can be minimised, or on a different virtual desktop), and you can click on the link to see the details of the event. Chrome will ask for permission to enable this extension, which you need to allow. If you work on multiple workspaces, you will need to enable this extension on each workspace separately, as you can only enable desktop notifications for one subdomain at a time. If you reinstall the Chrome browser, you also need to reenable the desktop notifications.

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Customising your Kanbanery board

In addition to being able to define a custom workflow (see 'Your first Kanbanery project'), there are customisations to the look and feel of your kanban board possible. 1) Custom logo All paid accounts are able to add a custom logo. Click on the 'Account' link, then on the 'Company Logo' tab. Logos can be in GIF, JPG or PNG (except on Internet Explorer) format, and the recommended height is 50px. Your custom logo will replace the 'Kanbanery' logo for you and all your team members when you are logged in to your workspace.

2) Custom CSS Paid accounts are able to request custom CSS on a per-workspace basis. Once enabled, every project in that workspace has "Custom CSS" tab in the settings page where you can add your own CSS files. This is not a standard Kanbanery feature, and overriding original Kanbanery CSS can have unintended consequences. That is why it is an 'at your own risk' feature that requires discussion on a case-by-case basis with the Kanbanery development team.

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Your first Kanbanery project

Kanbanery comes prepared with a set of standard project templates to help you get started quickly. They are summarized in the table below. What is immediately apparent is the range of uses for Kanbanery, and how flexible it is. All of the options in this table can be changed / customised they are a starting point, but you are not tied to them. Kanbanery project templates
Project Basic Personal Kanban Task Types Workflow Estimates Tiny Small Medium Big Huge 5 minutes 10 minutes 30 minutes 1 hour 2 hours 4 hours none

Household Chore To Do Office Work Doing Personal Development Done Yard Job To Do This week Today Doing Delegated Done Lead Verified Initial Contact Information Collection Offer Negotiation Contract Lost/Won Backlog Ready Coding Testing Approval Done Backlog Ready Coding Code review Testing Approval Done

Advanced Kanban

Personal Household Chore Office Work Personal Development Yard Job

Sales Process

Cold Warm Hot

Basic Software Project

Feature Bug Chore

Small Medium Large Extra Large

Advanced Project

Software Story Feature Design Bug Chore Suggestion

0 0.5 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 none

Home brewing

Ale Porter Pilsner Bock Lager Malt beer

Collect equipment Collect ingredients Soak grains Prepare wort Ferment Bottle Ready to drink!

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Customising your workflow Of course, the default templates may not reflect the way you work, so it will often be necessary to customise the steps in your workflow. Your workflow should both reflect the way you work, and help you visualise your system. You may not get it right first time, and that's why the system is highly customisable. Columns (that reflect steps in your workflow) can be renamed (double click on title) or deleted (you will be asked where any tasks in that column should be moved to), and you can add new columns, choosing where they should appear, and a WIP limit (capacity optional):

Real life example I worked with a customer who moved papers from a filing tray labelled 'Ideas' to his desk. Once he'd worked on them, they were discussed at a focus group, before moving to a queue of work for his software development team. His Kanbanery board reflected his reallife workflow with columns 'Ideas' 'My desk' 'Focus group' 'Dev queue'. He used WIP limits to make sure that he didn't have too much for the focus group to consider, or a too crowded desk! Columns can also be drag and dropped to change the order of steps in your workflow if required. Do experiment it is quite likely that steps in your workflow are different to the defaults provided by Kanbanery. Experimenting and customising your board is seen by many kanban practitioners as a sign of project health.

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Adding tasks Tasks are added by clicking on the icon at the top of the first column, or by using the keyboard shortcut access-key + T (see 'Keyboard Shortcuts' for details of this and other power user shortcuts). This opens the new task modal dialog. At a minimum a task needs to have a title. That's it you can add all the other information later, or never. As long as your task has a title that your users can understand, that is enough for the task to be useful. Think of the real-world task cards discussed earlier these would normally have a minimum of information. Just enough to make sense.

The add task dialog with the new task button circled. Only a title is required all other details are optional, or can be added later. The task then appears at the top of the first workflow column on your board.

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Moving tasks Once added to your project board, tasks can be moved through your workflow in one of two ways: 1. drag and drop click and hold the card to move it 2. the 'Move' dropdown (if enabled, see 'Per project options') 3. the 'Move to Project' dropdown (if enabled, see 'Per project options') A task can move forwards and backwards through your system, and there are no restrictions on where it can be moved to. For example, a task could move from 'To Do' to 'Done', missing 'In progress'. Using kanban 'pull system' theory, whoever moves the task automatically becomes its new owner. It is possible to avoid this behaviour by holding down SHIFT when dragging a task card. It is also intended that cards should be moved up and down within their respective columns, to reflect their priority, most important / next at the top. It is also possible to move a task card to a different project this must be enabled in 'Settings General Show move task to a project dropdown' When this is enabled, a 'MOVE TO PROJECT' button appears on the task card options (see 'More about the task card'):

If the task types or estimates for a task that is moved between projects do not exist in the new project, they will be lost, and set as undefined. They can then be set to a task type or estimate from the new project. Once moved to a new project, the task will be found as the last task in the first column. Power user tip With a long list of tasks in a column, moving lower tasks to the top of the list, should they suddenly change priority can be somewhat slow when relying on drag and drop alone. Much easier (if you have the 'Move to column' drop down enabled) to move the task using the drop down to an adjacent column (it will appear at the top) and from there move to the original column (where it will again appear at the top) thanks to @olamad313 for this tip!

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Minimising columns You may not wish to view all the columns on your board simultaneously (or simply lack screen real estate). Individual columns can therefore be minimised.

Columns are minimised either by clicking the small arrow next to the column name, or the column title button. The title button is then greyed out (shown circled above), the column minimised, title displayed vertically, with number of tasks and WIP for that column displayed beneath. Note that minimising a column this only affects the current board viewer. Minimising is undone using either of the techniques above - clicking the small arrow next to the column name, or the column title button. Column state is remembered for a board user so if you close and reopen your project, the column states will be as last set.

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Save a project as template There may be occasions where you wish to replicate your project workflow settings and use them on new projects. To allow you to do this, Kanbanery allows you to export details of the project that you are currently working in as a template for future use. This functionality is accessed via 'Settings Template':

You choose which elements of the project you wish to be the basis of your template, give it a name, and once exported it is listed in the project templates that you have access to on creating a new project.

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The Icebox & The Archive

Icebox A task can have a life before appearing on the project board, or equally possibly, the owner can decide to 'put it on ice' for a time, and remove it from view, without deleting it, so those using the board can focus on other tasks and not be distracted. This is essentially the idea of the Icebox a repository of tasks that are either not ready for working on, suggestions /ideas for the future, or tasks that perhaps seemed necessary in the past, but have now grown cold. It is possible to search the Icebox, edit task cards in place there, or even create tasks directly there. The main goal of this area is that the cards do not appear on the main project board, although they can be moved there:

The 'Move to board' button is circled above when a card is moved to the board, it appears at the bottom of the first column.

When a card is moved to the Icebox (button circled above) it is listed at the top of the Icebox. Cards can only be moved to the Icebox from the first column on the project board. This is a small limitation, as it doesn't take long to move to the first column, and then to the Icebox from there. The theory of the Icebox is as described but you can use it in any way you decide, subject to the constraints above.

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Archive If the Icebox is some kind of place for cards yet to feature on the board, then by that reasoning, the Archive is some kind of afterlife. Perhaps that's not the best analogy though, as cards can return from the Archive, at which point the analogy becomes either controversial or blasphemous, depending on your viewpoint. Cards move to the Archive from the last column on the project board, and only from the last column.

Mouseover of the titlebar of the last column reveals a 'brush' (tidying up!), and clicking on this brush moves all tasks in the last column to the archive. This is not the same as deleting these cards can be restored to the board

Like the Icebox, cards within the Archive can be searched or edited, or moved back to the board (button circled above) or even moved to a new project. Cards moved back to the project board appear at the bottom of the last column on the board. Real world user tip Over time, as the 'Done' column fills, you may find board performance slows slightly. Archiving 'Done' tasks can speed up your board performance, as the browser has less DOM elements to load.

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More about the task card

There are various options for working with a task card, both in its minimised and in its expanded state. It is possible that not all options will be displayed, as some are turned off by default, and need to be enabled from Settings General (see 'Per project options')

This minimised task card is showing options which appear on MOUSEOVER within the area to the left of the small spanner/wrench. Important options To expand a task card, click the arrow to the left of the task id #116616 To change Task Type, click on the task type HOUSEHOLD CHORE to open the dropdown To change the estimate, click on the estimate Small to open the dropdown To move to another column, click the MOVE text to open the dropdown To edit title, double click the text 'buy birthday present for my dog' To change/remove owner, click the user avatar to open a drop down To reveal further options, click the spanner (bottom right) We will look now at further options visible after clicking the spanner.

Other options To delete a task card, click the red cross (THIS CANNOT BE UNDONE) To move a card (from the first column only) to the icebox, click the blue icon next to the red cross To set a deadline for a task, click the dark grey clock icon to open date picker To indicate that a task is blocked, click the 'Do not disturb' icon (see 'What is a blocker?')
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 To move a card to another project, click MOVE TO PROJECT to open dropdown To subscribe for email updates on the progress of a card, click on the mail icon To return to the default card options view, click on the green swish on the right hand side Ready to pull You may have noticed the outline of a 'tick' next to the user avatar on the minimised task card above. This is known as the 'Ready to pull' option, and when clicked, marks the card as follows:

The original purpose of this was to allow software developers on the Kanbanery team indicate that tasks they were working on were ready for testing, and avoid having to create a buffer column 'Ready for testing'. Some teams still use this approach, but I've seen the 'Tick' used for other purposes such as indicating to a client 'This is feasible' in a backlog. You may find other uses for it. Urgency One of the other options on the minimised task card is an 'Urgency' marker again, with the flexibility to use as you require. This simply marks the minimised card with one or two stars, which can be removed with the 'minus' sign beside them. A card marked with a star does not exhibit any special behaviour (such as moving up the column) or state it is a purely visual indicator.

Deadlines Deadlines can be set either when adding a new task, or from the additional options below. Deadlines are shown beneath the task card in minimised view, and change to orange as the deadline approaches, and to red when the deadline has passed. Other than the visual indication, the existence of a deadline or the fact that it has passed does not force the task card into any special state.

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Activity indications on task card As your users work on a task card, they may add comments, upload files, or add subtasks. You can see that this has happened, as the default view of the card will change:

the speech bubble with the number 2 besides it indicates 2 comments within the task the white tick within the green circle with the number 2 besides it indicates that there are two subtasks within this task. The number displayed is simply the total number it does not change as subtasks are completed the folder with the number 1 besides it indicates that there is one file upload within this task card. All types of files can be uploaded (subject to the size limits of your subscription), but one particularly helpful feature is that thumbnail views of most common graphic file formats will be automatically generated and previewed within the expanded task view the nasty looking green creature indicates that there is one link in the task to an external bug tracking system Clicking on any of these 'activity reminder' links will expand the task card and take you directly to the area you have selected. External bug tracking Some users track bugs in their software development projects in Kanbanery, whilst others use external systems. Kanbanery accomodates bug tracking in external systems When this feature is enabled ('Settings General Settings'), it allows you to enter URLs to an external bug tracking system.

As bugs are completed, they can be ticked off on the list within the ticket. Though again, the number on the task card activity indicator does not change, which would in this case perhaps be helpful.

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So what's a blocker? If we add a 'Blocker' to a task card, we are indicating that the task cannot currently be progressed. A blocker can be an existing card within the system for example a developer is blocked, waiting for a design. Clicking on the 'Blocker' icon allows us to choose an existing task:

When we add the blocker, the blocked state is shown as follows, with the blocked card clearly marked, and a link back to the blocker, which is also highlighted to indicate that it is blocking another task:

Blockers can operate across any columns, though you can only select tasks as blockers that appear on the board (i.e. not tasks from the Icebox or Archive). You cannot assign blockers from a different project. Kanbanery also allows a free text blocker you are not necessarily going to be blocked by something that is a task within your system. For example waiting on a third party ('Waiting for translator') or any issue which you feel does not not belong as a task to be owned and tracked on your project board. Both types of blocker are resolved in the same way by clicking on the green 'Resolve' button. A blocker is purely a visual indication it doesn't put the card into any kind of locked state or similar. Decide with your team how you wish to deal with blockers Kanbanery does not force its way on you.

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Per project options

One of the main goals for the Kanbanery system was that it should be both simple and highly customisable. To this end, there are various options that can be changed per project. Task types You can add, reorder, or delete task types from 'Settings' 'Task types'.

'Delete' appears as an option on mouseover of existing task types. If you try to delete a Task Type for which tasks still exist, you will be prompted as to which Task Type you would like to assign the existing tasks. This was designed to prevent users accidentally losing data, but there's an added and useful side-effect, in that it enables us to rename or change the colour of existing Task Types thanks to @psionides for the tips below:
To change colour create a new task type with the same name, and correct colour delete the original task type you will be prompted to assign the existing tasks to a new task type assign them to the new, correctly coloured task type create a new task type with the correct name and colour delete the original task type you will be prompted to assign the existing tasks to a new task type assign them to the new, correctly named task type

To rename

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Estimates You are free to use whatever system of estimating you are familiar with in Kanbanery (or none at all it is not compulsory) If you do use estimates, you need to assign a numeric value for each estimate you use. See the illustration below this is the 'Value' field:

This value is then displayed in brackets after the 'Label' in the table below. Estimates are displayed in numerical order based on their 'Value' Esimates can be deleted the 'Delete' link appears on mouseover of an existing estimate. If you wish to delete an estimate for which there are tasks with that estimate assigned, you will be prompted to either replace the estimate with another one, or remove the estimate for those tasks and leave them unestimated. Estimate types that are common feature in the project templates, ranging from the Fibonnaci sequence (often used for estimating the complexity of software features) to 'T shirt sizes' (simple to comprehend for the lay person). There is nothing to stop you introducing your own estimate types hours or even minutes should you prefer. However, remember that all estimates require a numeric 'Value', as Kanbanery's reporting features need this to generate reports.

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General settings The first option within General Settings is to change the name of your project. This has no side effects and can be done as often as required. To avoid your board feeling cluttered with options, it is possible to disable certain visual elements of your Kanbanery board. Or you may simply not require certain options, so the 'Settings General' tab gives you conrtrol over which of Kanbanery's options you use. These are project level settings, and do not affect other projects in your workspace. Table of options, indicating default options
Option name Task IDs Notes Turns on the display of a task ID on the minimised task card. Note that a Flash object is used for displaying this (to enable simpler copy paste to system clipboard) and there have been complaints that having many of these objects open uses excessive CPU. Display option Display option Can be useful on crowded board Display option Do you need the green tick? To enable comments within a task card File uploads per task card are possible, but be aware that there are limits based on subscription type See below 'Git integration' Enables display of full audit of card in expanded state A task can have subtasks, which can be marked off as completed. If a card has subtasks, its minimised state indicates this The 'stars' that indicate urgency Display option This option allows entering a URL to a bug in an external system (or in fact a URL to any external system) Whether to display help tooltips on mouseover certain elements Whether to show a unique URL to a task on a board, e.g. for emailing Whether to allow tasks to have a deadline (NEW - December 2011) This determines whether a new task should be added to the top of the list in the first column, or the bottom. Default?

Task types Owner avatars Move task to a column dropdown Move task to a project dropdown Ready-to-pull option Comments File attachments Git commits Task history Subtasks

Task priorities Estimates Issues

Tooltips URLs of tasks Deadlines Newly created task goes to the bottom of the list

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GitHub integration GitHub is now the most popular Git hosting system, and Kanbanery allows you to automatically list Git commits relating to a given task within the task card itself. Configuration options are part Kanbanery, part GitHub. Kanbanery To enable this, you must have the 'Git commits' option enabled within your project settings. Then go to 'Settings GitHub' to retrieve your project token:

You will also need your project ID from the URL you use to access your project eg https://test.kanbanery.com/projects/7726/ (ID in bold) GitHub Within the admin settings on your repository site, select 'Kanbanery' hook from the Service Hooks list and fill the form with your project ID and project token and save. This ensures that every Git commit with a task id in the commit message (indicate the task id with a hash i.e. #12345) will be shown in the Git commits list for the task on the project board:

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Users and roles

Avatars for all users are taken from the free service gravatar.com (http://gravatar.com/). This means that you require an account with gravatar.com for the email address you use on Kanbanery. This has caused some users confusion, and is worth checking should your avatar not appear. There is also the possibility of gravatar.com taking several hours for an avatar to be ready so some patience may be required. Collaboration with other users (subject to the limits of your Kanbanery subscription) is managed from the 'Members' tab:

New users are invited to your project by email. You need to select a user role when inviting a new user: Viewer Member Manager can see everything on the project board, but cannot change anything full interaction with all tasks on board, read-write, delete, move as member, with the ability to make changes to the board itself

Project users can be deleted from this page (any tasks that they own will be set to have no owner) or their roles can be changed. Remember that user roles are per project it is possible to have users with different roles on different projects, Manager on one, Viewer on another.

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Keeping up to date
Kanbanery includes several methods to keep up-to-date with what is happening on a project. It was one of the first tools to introduce live updates via web-sockets, so that users collaborating in real-time on a board see each others changes instantaneously. This makes collaborating on a board much easier and even safer because your board updates the moment that a change is made, you don't have to worry about devising a complex synchronising protocol. Real world experience says that it is possible to end up conflicting with someone else's changes in certain rare edge-cases. If this happens, it's easy enough to manually refresh the page to get the latest version, though it is theoretically possible to lose one edit.

RSS
The 'Project Log' contains a day-by-day record of activity for your project, and this is also available as an RSS feed (circled):

Email
You can also subscribe for email updates on an individual task:

The email subscription button is circled above it is shown when extra options for the task are visible (see 'More about the task card' for further details)

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Or set up notifications within the Account Notifications tab, which has three options:

The final option is to use the API to devise your own custom notifications system (for example if you wish to receive email updates for all changes to a particular column) see 'The Kanbanery API' for more details of setting up your own Kanbanery integration.

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Keyboard shortcuts
To save time on common tasks, there are some keyboard shortcuts enabled in Kanbanery. The 'access key' that is required is browser and OS dependent:
Ctrl (Mac) Alt (Internet Explorer) Alt+Shift (Chrome/Linux) Ctrl+Alt (Chrome/Mac)

are all possibilities. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_key for more information on this for convenience, we'll use the term 'access-key'.
access-key + T open 'New Task' dialog access-key + F open/close 'Find' bar access-key + C open 'New column' dialog shift + DRAG

move task without changing owner

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Reporting
The introduction to kanban earlier in this manual mentioned that one of the rules of kanban was to seek continuous improvement the aim of the reporting options within Kanbanery is to assist you with this.

Cumulative flow chart

This chart illustrates the state of the different stages of your workflow across time.

To remove columns from the report, click the column name text and the report will automatically update. For example, it's common to exclude the 'Done' column from a report like this.

('How to read a Cumulative Flow Diagram' by kind permission of Paul Klipp) Look for spikes and peaks a healthy flow should be constant without marked peaks. In
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this chart it could be worth investigating the events around the beginning of August to check that the project was working efficiently. Though kanban gives you the tools to analyse project workflow, you and your team need to come up with the conclusions and answers. All report images generated within Kanbanery can be printed or exported as files (links at top right of report).

Lead and cycle time

Lead and cycle time are key measures of how efficiently tasks are flowing through your system. Kanbanery allows you to report on this, and to customise your reporting to suit your project workflow. Lead time measures the entire flow of one task through the system to take an example from software projects, from when an item enters the backlog, to when it is deployed to the live site. Cycle time on the other hand is thought of as the time spent actually doing the work of the task so from when a task is 'In progress' to 'Ready to deploy' for many software projects. Because most users will have a custom set of steps in their workflow, Kanbanery enables you to select the 'starts at' and 'ends at' for both lead and cycle time reporting.

Task distribution
Kanbanery's task distribution reports allow you to look at: Tasks by owner Tasks by task type Tasks by estimates Columns by sum of estimates For each of these reports, you are able to choose whether or not to include tasks in the Icebox and Archive when generating the report.

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Searching
Kanbanery's search interface can be accessed either through clicking the 'Search' link at the top right of your project board, or via the keyboard shortcut access-key + F:

The text box is for free text entry, and can optionally be combined with restricting by task type or owner. Task type and owner, when combined, act as an ' AND' search. If your search finds matching tasks, non-matching tasks are greyed-out, and you have the option of hiding them entirely:

Remember that both the Icebox and the Archive can be searched in the same way, and that the search initiated from the main project board will not search either!

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Importing & Exporting tasks

Import Tasks in CSV format can be imported into your Kanbanery system by accessing 'Settings Import Tasks' on your board. Tasks to be imported are expected to be in the format: title,type,estimate,priority,description,column_name,creator_email The only required fields are title and type. All other fields are optional. The data import will create task types, estimates and columns if they do not already exist on the board. You are not limited to importing tasks when you create a new board tasks can be exported at any time. Export To export data, go to 'Settings Export Data', where clicking 'Export' will generate a CSV file of all data (including the Icebox and Archive), in the format: title,task type,estimate,priority,description,column email,created at,subtasks,comments AgileZen integration name,creator

The Export Data page also allows you to export your Kanbanery tasks to the AgileZen kanban tool to do this you need to provide your AgileZen API key (which is not stored) and after clicking 'Fetch', select the AgileZen project into which you wish to import your Kanbanery project data.

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Export to PDF This option was designed to let people print task cards for a physical board, if they want to. PDFs scale on printing, so you could export to PDF and then load your printer with A6 index cards, and have a set of printed cards for a physical board. Kanbanery's export to PDF option is accessed via 'Settings Export to PDF', and the facility gives you the option to include/exclude any combination of the board itself, the Icebox and the Archive, as well as filtering by task type, owner, creator, or creation time.

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The Kanbanery API

The Kanbanery API is implemented as a REST interface, and is free and unlimited to use for all Kanbanery users. A token is used to authenticate API requests the token is found in 'Account API token' and is unique to your user account:

Your API token is needed for all API calls, both to authenticate you, and to allow the API to record which user took certain actions. So updates that you make through the API using your API token will show up to other users as updates that you have made. Remember too that your role when interacting through the API will be the same as when interacting on your project through the web ordinarily so, for example a viewer will not be able to move tasks through the API, as they don't have that permission. The API supports the two most common response formats JSON and XML, and you can specify on a request by request basis in which format you wish to receive a response. The API is well documented, and various client libraries are available (see 'Related Projects'). The latest documentation is available at the community support forum, and the latest API version is 1.3: http://support.kanbanery.com/entries/20347483-api-version-1-3 One useful change made in response to user feedback was to add a URL update service to avoid the need for API clients to poll the API for changes. Instead, users can register a URL to receive updates for their project (note that this is a project level option accessed via 'Settings URL Live Update'):

Once you have registered a URL to receive status updates, project updates will be sent to
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the URL you specified. Any create / update / delete of a resource (task, column) results in an HTTP request containing JSON data giving the latest data for the resource in question, the id of the user who performed the operation, as well as an authorisation token (so that your application can validate the server making the request). Deletes simply send the type and id. More information on the URL Live Update service can be found on the community support forum: http://support.kanbanery.com/entries/493062-url-live-update-service

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Related projects
Listed below are some projects that use the Kanbanery API. Kanbanery for IntelliJ A plugin for the IntelliJ IDE that enables Kanbanery as an IntelliJ tasks resource, adding titles (and reference ID's) are then added automatically to each commit so Kanbanery can reference tasks to commits. http://plugins.intellij.net/plugin/?idea&id=6363 Kanbanery terminal client Perhaps for the most hardcore of geeks described as 'command line-ish but also has a board view'. http://github.com/ktoso/janbanery-shell Kanbanery feedback Embed a feedback form into any web application that will submit tasks (bugs/ideas etc) directly into your Kanbanery board. https://github.com/wrozka/kanbanery-feedback Google Chrome browser extension A browser extension that allows users to add new task cards to their Kanbanery board from the Chrome taskbar. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kpcahbjadhelkjdcghhplbaeajkfjamj Kanbantastic A gem wrapping the Kanbanery API https://github.com/Ennova/kanbantastic Ruby gem Ruby client library and CLI for Kanbanery.com https://github.com/sickill/kanbanery-ruby-client Redmine_kanbanery A simple redmine plugin that allows one to push issues into your Kanbanery project https://github.com/wr0ngway/redmine_kanbanery Janbanery A RESTful Kanbanery API Java connector https://github.com/ktoso/janbanery Columns bookmarklet Not API based, but potentially useful: a bookmarklet to resize your Kanbanery columns https://gist.github.com/1031086 Filter by multiple tasks Again, not an API client, but addresses a Kanbanery shortcoming search by multiple columns https://gist.github.com/1308970

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What if I don't like Kanbanery?

Kanbanery is one of a number of web based kanban systems, and there are users for whom it is not the best choice. You are not tied to Kanbanery, and neither is your data: all Kanbanery plans have a free 30 day trial all Kanbanery plans allow you to export all of your data to a CSV file all Kanbanery plans allow you to delete your account and all data Kanbanery billing (once active) will be monthly, with no minimum commitment Kanbanery even offers you the ability to export your data to an alternative product, AgileZen

If you decide that Kanbanery is not suitable for you or your organisation, it would be helpful for the team to learn why this was, so any feedback that you could provide would be welcomed. That way the team can learn how to improve the system for the future.

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Appendix 1 selected further reading on kanban

Kanban books 'Kanban' David J. Anderson (Blue Hole Press, April 2010) 'Kanban and Scrum - Making the Most of Both' Henrik Kniberg (lulu.com March 2010) 'Personal Kanban: Mapping Work / Navigating Life' Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria Barry (Createspace, February 2011) 'Scrumban - Essays on Kanban Systems for Lean Software Development' Corey Ladas (Modus Cooperandi Press January 2009) Kanban articles on the web http://kanbanery.com/ebook/GettingStartedWithKanban.pdf http://matthrivnak.com/2008/04/16/lean-quote-kanban-the-milkman/ http://paulklipp.com/images/PersonalProductivity.pdf Lean/agile methods http://www.agilistapm.com/overview-of-leanagile-methods/ Limited WIP societies London http://skillsmatter.com/user-group/agile-scrum/the-limited-wip-society New York http://www.meetup.com/nyc-kanban/ Krakow http://groups.google.com/group/limited-wip-society-of-krakow

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The Kanbanery Team

Lunar Logic Polska Kanbanery is software written by Lunar Logic Polska. Lunar Logic Polska was founded in 2004, and is one of the largest Ruby on Rails development companies in Poland. Other products from Lunar Logic Polska include the open-source time tracking system 'RubyTime' and the password manager 'Brokenglass'. Members of the Lunar Logic team are active in the Ruby community and regularly speak at conferences and the Krakw Ruby Users Group. http://lunarlogicpolska.com/ About the author The author has worked at Lunar Logic Polska since March 2009. He worked with Paul Klipp on the initial plans for Kanbanery during breaks from the Agile Eastern Europe conference in Kiev in September 2009, and has used Kanbanery for many projects since its non-public alpha release in late 2009. This manual is not an official publication of Lunar Logic Polska or Kanbanery. Views expressed are the author's own. All feedback should be addressed to the author jcb1973@gmail.com.

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