How to Manage Creative Projects with the Kanban Framework
It should come as no surprise that creative minds often connect best with strong visuals. That is why the Kanban framework with visual cards is essential for managing creative projects properly. Whether you are fully agile or new to project management altogether, Kanban is simple to learn and implement. Plus, it is extremely gratifying to move a card from one status to the next, just like scratching off your to-do list.
What Is the Kanban Framework?
Kanban is a development framework that you can use to create software for DevOps. To make use of the framework successfully, participants must communicate constantly and transparently. Since the framework makes use of the agile methodology, gauging and knowing your team’s capacity at any given moment is paramount.
You can implement the Kanban framework in several ways by setting up your own rules. What shape it takes is going to depend on your organization and industry-specific needs. You should always use a board as a visual representation of every item that is being worked on.
How Does the Kanban Framework Work?
Work is represented by tile cards, organized into columns based on the status of each task. This visual board view lets you quickly and easily see which items are to be done, in progress, in review, returned, and completed. When a task needs to change status, such as moving from In Progress to Completed, you can drag and drop its card into the appropriate status column.
Because of its intuitive and easily adoptable nature, Kanban is extremely effective at promoting continuous collaboration across any member of your team. Creative Workflow takes Kanban to the next level for creative projects. Statuses that relate specifically to creative proofs and approvals are also available in Kanban boards since these are critical stages of your workflow.
How Can the Kanban Framework Contribute to Creative Projects?
See What to Focus on Next
Whether an item is currently in progress or has an upcoming due date but has not been started, Kanban view will help you quickly prioritize what to tackle next. When you are working with creative assets, there might be proof that is awaiting your feedback or a design that is ready for round two. Kanban boards make it easy to identify where critical content pieces are, so they can get to the market faster. Goodbye backlog.
Collaborate Easier Across Teams
Sometimes you only need to focus on your own assigned work. Oftentimes, it may be more beneficial to have an overview of a project. Especially if you are the project manager. By looking at the status of a project, you can get a pulse on how much your team has accomplished. Goodbye, bottlenecks.
Make Progress Feel Real
It might be hard to believe, but the biggest reason for Kanban’s effectiveness is purely psychological. Beyond its power in pushing creative projects forward, teams love Kanban because it just makes progress feel real. Think about checking off a to-do list item or watching the progress bar on your pizza tracker. We humans feel good when we see something reflecting our momentum. Kanban encourages you to complete work by rewarding you with that “feel-good” moment of success. And it does so whenever you change progress status or view how much your team has accomplished.
Conclusion
No matter your role in creative projects, using Kanban is a surefire way to manage your workload. Now, you can both continuously collaborate with team members and stay agile. Kanban will bring you the simplicity of increased focus and the satisfaction of accomplishing work efficiently.
While there are countless tools that offer Kanban on its own, you’ll find the most success if you incorporate it into a larger workflow or project management system. Lytho helps you streamline your entire workflow and harmonize all brand collateral under a single, uniform platform. Feel free to reach out to us by scheduling a demo and learning how our creative solutions can boost the effectiveness of your creative projects. We look forward to speaking with you!
