Are you in doubt whether you are ready to start using the Kanban board? Do you think such a board is only for more mature or larger organizations? Or maybe you're just not sure where to get started. Below you'll find two examples of common tasks you easily register and track with the Kanban board, as well as the first step to take to get your team agile.
Those tough nuts to crack
All service desk have those difficult calls they need to deal with. Think of calls that your team doesn't readily have the solution to, but require a deeper dive. Whether you have a specific team (back office), or work on these issues on a specific day in the week, these are the perfect types of calls to tackle with the Kanban board.
The side projects and activities
Some tasks just need to be done. They aren't necessarily related to a customer, but are activities a team or department pick up to help the organization. Such activities can include updating news or knowledge items, or preparing that week’s team meeting with agenda. Include any tasks you're don't want to forget!
Stand up and get together
Organize a stand-up. A stand-up is a moment where the team gets together in front of the Kanban board to discuss that what they'll work on for the day. Limit the stand-up to 15 minutes and make sure everyone stands to keep the meeting as concise as possible.
Open the Kanban board along side the stand-up so the team sees all tasks that need to be worked on. Make sure these tasks are relevant to the team, such as a specific operator group working on second line calls, or a team working on a specific project together.
During the stand-up, prioritize the most important and urgent issues with the team. Assign the tasks with the highest priority to team members, so that everybody has something to work on.
With a stand-up, you create a specific moment which involves all team members involved. You make sure the important tasks are assigned to the right person. Repeat the stand-up daily so that the team shares and tracks their progress. When they need help, they're able to consult the whole team.
When you reserve a moment each day to discuss the progress of tasks, you provide a clear, focused way of working on the most important issues. You're able to visualize the workload, which helps you identify bottlenecks, opportunities to collaborate or tasks that require additional skills required
Let us know how you use the Kanban Board!
Experiment further
After you've made a stand-up part of your team's daily routine, you're ready for the next step. Check out the agile service desk blog by one of our own scrum masters, Gerard Bakker. You'll find the 6 key principles of Kanban and how to implement them at your service desk.
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