Kanban for multiple projects

Question

We've been using http://acunote.com to manage our work queue. It's great for the planning phase, because you can nest stories. This makes it easy to outline an MVP within a given sprint.

Given that we are a startup, we frequently have to juggle multiple projects back and forth within a given time period. For example, this week we have to update a partner website, develop the backend for our main product, as both web, iOS and android clients. The three clients have different engineers working on them.

I would like to use a kanban board to visualize our current sprint. I find that they allow me to more easily see progress.

I don't know how to manage the fact that we have multiple clients. It seems like it would make it hard for our mobile guy to know which mobile tasks are remaining. They might not be next to each other.

I also like that we have little mini-MVPs within a given sprint. Normally, if we finish one, we can start working on the next one, but we want to get them released in between. They don't line up with sprint boundaries.

Should I use separate boards per mini-project? Per web/iOS/Android clients?

Is there a good digital kanban that allows you to order individual boards like a backlog?

Answer 1

You can think of a "client" as just another variable to display on your board. Since it's just another variable, all you need is a way to distinguish one client from another visually. You can do this with (off the top of my head)...

• location
• shape
• color
• orientation
• size
• something else...

You could put clients in their own swim lane. Or assign each a different color.... etc.

Most digital boards support at least a few different visual variables.

Answer 2

Take a look at Eylean Board. It allows you to represent several projects on one board using rows. All the rows may be visible at a time or you can remove selected ones from the scope. Another solution may be task grouping and filtering by categories - then all the tasks can be represented on one board and row, but attached to different categories.

Answer 3

You should take a look at LeanKit Kanban. Its has tremendous amount of flexibility and will allow represent your different projects with your choice of visualizations or using swimlanes within a single board.

Answer 4

Jira with the Greenhopper plugin have "Rapid Boards" (atlassians vesrion of a kanban board) You can use it to display tasks based on searchqueries and simple customizable filters.

You could create multiple projects in jira, and have all tasks displayed in one board.

Here is the link to atlassian, and another link for a youtube demo.

Answer 5

I use FogBugz with Stefan Rusek's excellent Kanban plugin. While it only has one "board", you can filter things by project or Milestone, which effectively allows you to "switch views" quickly. FogBugz also has a backlog plugin.