Multi-colored Postcards

Years ago, when I worked at a magazine publisher, the building had two floors. All the writers, editors, and art directors worked on the 1st floor, while our 2nd floor was primarily our online teams, including the software developers. Because the digital group was growing more quickly than the print side, some of what they were doing flooded our area.

It started with them removing the art on the walls to put up whiteboards filled with project punch lists and flow charts that the digital teams would occasionally come down to review and change and then return to their department.

One team adapted a more modular approach and used large multi-colored note cards in a Kanban approach to their project management to move the cards as needed instead of having to erase the whiteboard to make room for new plans.

Since then, I’ve occasionally used that process to apply to my larger projects. However, until today, I have never used that as a permanent solution to managing all my ongoing projects.

On the desk next to me is a stack of multi-colored notecards, with each color representing a different project, and on each car exists a task or objective. Instead of moving the tasks linearly across through various stages, I’ll merely move them up or down based on their priority. Those finished get taken off the board and perhaps stored for future reference with notes.

This would be much better with visuals, and once I have all the projects and tasks worked out, I’ll share a photo of what’s going on, along with my thoughts on the individual projects and how I’m managing their progress.