Superpowers happen when a team combines three key ingredients: a laser focus, deep collaboration and “user-centricity”.
Zenboard is a new team board that makes all of this easier. (Demo here).
The grid is based on the physical team boards popularised by Scrum. The flexible rows make it really powerful. (Sorry JIRA, you’re row are too rigid!). Zenboard isn’t tied to any particular methodology though, Scrum or otherwise.
5 Ways Zenboard Gives Teams Laser Focus
1. Clarity. Each row is a business challenge (such as “Travel back in time”) containing detailed tasks (such as “Charge flux capacitor”).
At a glance you can see the status of a business challenge (e.g. three cards “In progress” and one card “Done”), which makes it easy to review high-level priorities every day.
For example, if you have a daily standup then Zenboard is a good focal point. (I recommend “Walk the board” rather than “Round Robin”).
2. Visibility of desired outcomes. This makes it easier to prioritise cards (tasks) because everyone can see if a card is aligned with the desired outcome.
It makes it easier for all team members to prioritise cards (so it’s not just the product manager’s job). This self-organisation is at the heart of agile.
3. Rows make the board less cluttered which makes people more likely to break down tasks into suitably small chunks. (Breaking down tasks is a key part of agile and GTD, based on insights from cognitive science).
Cluttered boards put people off creating more tasks because they don’t want to add to the clutter.
4. It’s easy to see the roadmap. This makes it easy to defer non-critical tasks to a later sprint. Deferring is a key part of the “4 Ds of time management”: delete, delegate/outsource, defer, do.
People don’t like to defer tasks to a generic backlog because, as we all know, most backlogs are a black hole from which tasks will never return.
5. It avoids important tasks “drowning”. This happens in JIRA and Trello because tasks from different features are all jumbled together. When a task is moved between columns it can easily get moved to the bottom of a column – the important task “drowns” under a low priority task.
3 Ways Zenboard Helps Teams Collaborate
Zenboard’s core is better prioritisation, and this unlocks space for people to collaborate early on the things that really matter.
1. Using Zenboard in conjunction with daily standups helps the right conversations happen.
Zenboard’s rows gives context to the tasks being discussed – the board shows what feature or desired outcome that tasks are part of.
Also, Zenboard’s rows gives the board more structure which makes priorities clearer – this makes it easier to focus standup conversations on the things that really matter. (And easier for team members to see where they can really make a difference – self-organisation is at the heart of agile!)
2. Zenboard’s AI coaching nudges team members to collaborate.
3. Zenboard helps team’s have frequent conversations with stakeholders. The board’s rows give the roadmap, while the board’s cards give an idea of progress.
How Zenboard Helps Teams Be User-Centric
Zenboard’s core is better prioritisation. Better prioritisation makes it easier for your team to focus on your user’s needs.