Monthly Archives: December 2014

What we did in 2014

Technology

Here’s all the stuff we built in 2014, as far as we can remember…

January

February

  • We made it easier to delete projects you no longer need, and to retrieve them if you change your mind.
  • (We found out that one of our patents is referenced by Microsoft, IBM and Ford!)

March

April

We pondered integrating with Box. Pondered and pondered…

May

June

We got really serious about integrating with Box…

July

  • We reworked our website and this blog to use a responsive design, so it would be easier to read on mobile devices.
  • We were a big part of the IPMA conference in Lacey, Washington.
  • We released Kerika+Box!

August

September

October

October was a really busy month.

November

  • We made it easier for you to share projects with people who are part of your account team.
  • We presented at the Lean Transformation Conference in Tacoma, where we were a bit hit.
  • We presented at the Project Management Institute’s Olympia Chapter meeting.

December

  • We added Archiving as a feature for Projects and Templates.
  • We took Christmas Day off. Well, some of us did.
Verbeug
Verbeug

Cards that are in Done or Trash are frozen

Agile & Scrum, Usability, , , , , ,

Cards in the Done or Trash column, of a Task Board or Scrum Board, cannot be modified without first moving them out of Done or Trash: this is different from how boards worked before, and we made this change as part of our recent update where we introduced the concept of Archives.

Done cards
Done cards

There are a couple of reasons why we did this:

  • It seems like common-sense: if you have deleted a card, or marked it as Done, why would you be making changes to it? If the card needs changes, or someone wants to do chat or any other updates, that card isn’t really deleted or done, is it?
  • It matches the behavior of Archived Projects: when you move a project into the Archive in your account, that project is frozen in its current state, and remains frozen while it is in the Archive.For symmetry and ease of understanding of the concepts of “Done” and “Archive”, it made sense that Done cards should also be frozen.

 

When Projects Get Done: Archive Them

Agile & Scrum, Government, Kanban & Lean, Usability, , , , ,

Here’s another new feature with our latest update: when a project is done, you can drag it to the Archive column on your Home page.

Archiving Projects
Archiving Projects

Archiving a project freezes it: no one can make any changes to it while it is in the Archive, so if you change your mind and want to make some changes to an archived project, you need to drag it back out of the Archive and into your Projects column.

All the documents attached to an Archived Project are frozen: the goal here is to preserve the final/completed state of a project and all its assets, so that later on if you need to investigate a problem — or deal with a FOIA request or some other legal disclosure requirement — you can do so with confidence.

All dates, status, chat and teams are also frozen: if someone was part of an Archived Project’s team at the time the project was moved to the Archive, they will continue to show up on that project team.

If a task had a due date and hadn’t yet been completed (i.e. the card hadn’t yet been moved to the Done column), that due date stays intact.

If the project was a Scrum Board, it will continue to stay attached to the Backlog it was using at the time the board got archived: when you view an archived Scrum Board, it will show that Backlog in it’s current state.  This makes it easy to archive Scrum Boards that represent different Sprints that work off the same shared Backlog!

You can change your mind: If you need to work again on a previously archived project, just drag it out of the Archive column and drop it into the Projects column on your Home Page, and that will “un-archive” (restore) your project.

You can create templates from archived projects: if you drag an archived project and drop it into the Templates column on your Home Page, that will create a template based upon that project, while leaving the project in your Archive.

When Projects Get Done: Archive Them

Agile & Scrum, Government, Kanban & Lean, Usability, , , , ,

Here’s another new feature with our latest update: when a project is done, you can drag it to the Archive column on your Home page.

Archiving Projects
Archiving Projects

Archiving a project freezes it: no one can make any changes to it while it is in the Archive, so if you change your mind and want to make some changes to an archived project, you need to drag it back out of the Archive and into your Projects column.

All the documents attached to an Archived Project are frozen: the goal here is to preserve the final/completed state of a project and all its assets, so that later on if you need to investigate a problem — or deal with a FOIA request or some other legal disclosure requirement — you can do so with confidence.

All dates, status, chat and teams are also frozen: if someone was part of an Archived Project’s team at the time the project was moved to the Archive, they will continue to show up on that project team.

If a task had a due date and hadn’t yet been completed (i.e. the card hadn’t yet been moved to the Done column), that due date stays intact.

If the project was a Scrum Board, it will continue to stay attached to the Backlog it was using at the time the board got archived: when you view an archived Scrum Board, it will show that Backlog in it’s current state.  This makes it easy to archive Scrum Boards that represent different Sprints that work off the same shared Backlog!

You can change your mind: If you need to work again on a previously archived project, just drag it out of the Archive column and drop it into the Projects column on your Home Page, and that will “un-archive” (restore) your project.

You can create templates from archived projects: if you drag an archived project and drop it into the Templates column on your Home Page, that will create a template based upon that project, while leaving the project in your Archive.

Beth Albertson’s presentation on using Kerika at DSHS

Agile & Scrum, Government, ,

Beth Albertson, Solutions Architect at Washington State’s Department of Social and Health Services, gave a presentation on November 18, 2014, at the Project Management Institute’s Olympia Chapter.

Beth Albertson
Beth Albertson

Beth talked about her own background in project management — how she started off as a chemist and researcher, and gradually found her way into project management and IT over the years — and how she used Kerika to transition from a classic “Waterfall” style of project management to something more Agile.

The presentation was very well received, and she has graciously agreed to share it with everyone :-)

A small, but hopefully useful, change in how Templates are sorted

Technology

A couple of weeks ago we expanded your privacy choices to make it more easy for your account team to discover your projects and templates, which is something that our enterprise users had been asking for.

With the update we did this past weekend, one small change you might notice is on your Home Page: the Templates column on this page will sort all the available templates like this:

  • Templates you create are shown first; presumably these are the most important ones from your perspective.
  • Next, we show you templates created by other people where you are part of the project team.
  • Next, we show you templates that are being made available to you because they are being shared within account teams.
  • And then, finally, we list all the templates that Kerika itself offers.

A small, but hopefully useful, change in how Templates are sorted

Technology

A couple of weeks ago we expanded your privacy choices to make it more easy for your account team to discover your projects and templates, which is something that our enterprise users had been asking for.

With the update we did this past weekend, one small change you might notice is on your Home Page: the Templates column on this page will sort all the available templates like this:

  • Templates you create are shown first; presumably these are the most important ones from your perspective.
  • Next, we show you templates created by other people where you are part of the project team.
  • Next, we show you templates that are being made available to you because they are being shared within account teams.
  • And then, finally, we list all the templates that Kerika itself offers.