Category Archives: Kanban & Lean

Posts related to Kanban and Lean methodology.

How to make sure someone sees your Chat

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

With our latest update we have made it easy for you to ensure that someone on a board team always sees your chat message, even if they are not assigned to that card.

The old rule was that everyone who is currently assigned to a card would get new chat pushed to them as emails.  Now, you can make sure someone gets that email notification right away, even if they aren’t assigned to a particular card:

Screenshot showing examples of directed chat
Directed chat

Using this feature is simple: just type the letter “@” anywhere in your chat message and Kerika offers all the matching suggestions:

Screenshot showing example of sending new chat
Sending new chat

“@All” lets you push your chat to every Board Admin and Team Member — something you should do only rarely to avoid annoying people!

Try this feature and let us know if we can improve it.

A simple weekly calendar

Kanban & Lean

Here’s a simple template that you can use to plan your work week: for yourself, and the team.

Screenshot of simple template for Weekly Schedule
Click to view this template
How to use this template:
  1. As tasks land on your desk through the day, add them as separate items (cards) in the left-most To Do column.
    • At least once a day make sure everything in the To Do column is sorted by priority, with the most important items on the top of the column.
  2. Every Monday plan out your week by dragging tasks from the To Do column to one of the days of the week (Monday, Tuesday, etc.)
  3. When you plan your week, consider any deadlines for your tasks. Not all tasks will have firm deadlines, but if they do, you should open the task and set a due date.
    1. Click on your face/avatar in the top-right corner of the app and use the Sync Calendar option to make sure your due dates from Kerika also show up in whatever calendar you use: Apple, Microsoft or Google. This needs to be done only once: after you connect your personal calendar with your Kerika account, any changes in due dates that you make in Kerika will automatically show in your calendar as well.
  4. Consider whether this is a personal calendar or a team calendar: if you want to plan out the week for an entire team, add them as Team Members to this board by clicking on the Board Team button. This is a great way to keep an entire team in sync.
  5. If you are using this as a team board, when you pick up tasks one by one make sure you set the status of each to In Progress, or whatever is relevant. This makes it easy for everyone on the team to know what’s happening, which is especially important in these days of remote work.
  6. When a task completes, mark it as Done! If you decide that a task doesn’t make sense anymore (maybe it is no longer needed?) you can move it to the Trash.
At the end of the week, hopefully, everything in the Monday through Friday columns will be moved to Done.
At the beginning of the next week, you can repeat the process: pull items from the To Do column into the other columns as you plan your next week.
New tasks will, of course, show in the middle of the week: the best thing to do is add them to the To Do column unless they are urgent; this will help you and your team not get disrupted too often during the middle of the week.
Try this template and see if your workweek gets less hectic.

How to manage an Email Marketing Calendar

Kanban & Lean, Tutorials,

Here’s another new marketing template for our users: a complete Task Board for folks that need to manage an email marketing calendar for their business or nonprofit.

Screenshot for Quarterly Email Marketing Calendar template
Click to view this template

As with all other templates we have been building, this one comes with tasks that are ready to go, with details of the work:

Screenshot showing Example Task
Example Task

Handy checklists of subtasks so you don’t miss anything:

Screenshot showing Example Checklist
Example Checklist

And links to useful resources for completing the task:

Screenshot showing Example Attachments
Example Attachments

Check out this template and let us know if we can improve it!

How to manage your Job Search

Kanban & Lean, Tutorials

We continue to add templates that we hope can help our users get more done with Kerika, and today it’s a Task Board Template for managing your job search:

Screenshot of template for Job Search
Click to view this template

Folks are changing jobs at a faster pace right now than we have ever seen, and while some people are highly organized and proficient at job searching, others can do with a little help, and that’s what we had in mind with this template.

Check it out and let us know if we can improve it!

How to Manage a Product Announcement

Kanban & Lean, Tutorials,

We have a new template that is a very comprehensive checklist of all the activities that a product marketing manager needs to consider, when launching a new product:

Screenshot of template for a Product Announcement
Click to view this template

The tasks are grouped into stages, represented by columns:

  1. Pre-Launch Prep: this includes tasks like finalizing the product name and starting outreach to media and analysts.
  2. Creating Internal Prep Documents: tasks in this include creating a competitive analysis and jobs-to-be-done matrix.
  3. Creating Internal Content: demo materials, talking points for sales team.
  4. Creating External Content: prepping (but not launching!) the product video, website landing pages, etc.
  5. Pre-launch Internal Training & Communications: training the sales  and customer support teams.
  6. Launch Day Execution: the big day! Pushing all the materials you had prepared to production.

To give credit where credit is due, this template is inspired by a blog post by Chris Orlob.

Check out this template and let us know how we can improve it!

How to Plan your Social Media Content

Kanban & Lean, Tutorials,

Another Marketing template for our users: this time, for folks that need to plan and execute on a social media content strategy.

Screenshot of the Social Media Content Planner template
Click to view this template

You can use this advance your marketing goals using Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

This template comes with a bunch of useful resources, like this card on listing your Call-To-Actions (CTAs):

An example of a resource card
An example of a resource card

We have also provided sample task cards for managing your posts, like this one for posting on Facebook:

Screenshot of Task for Facebook Post
Task for Facebook Post

This task, like the others, also comes complete with a checklist of subtasks so you don’t miss anything:

Screenshot of Checklist for Facebook Post
Checklist for Facebook Post

These sample task cards can be easily duplicated as you move through your social media content strategy.

Check out this template and let us know what you think!

How to Plan your SEO Blog Content

Kanban & Lean, Tutorials,

We have a new template to help folks plan their blog content to maximize their blog’s SEO effectiveness, and thereby drive more inbound traffic:

Screenshot showing template for creating blog content
Click to view this template

As with other Marketing Templates we have been creating for our users, there’s a column with useful resources for folks that are new to incorporating their blogs within their marketing activities.

The workflow itself is fairly simple: To Do → Researching → Drafting → Designing → Scheduled → Done.

There’s a sample task in the To Do column that you can duplicate for each blog post; it contains a complete checklist of subtasks to make sure you don’t miss anything:

Screenshot showing an example of blog post task
An example of blog post task

Check out this template and let us know if we can improve it!

How to plan a Virtual Marketing Event

Kanban & Lean, Tutorials,

Marketing events look like they will be virtual, rather than in-person, for a very long time, and to help our users we have a template that can set you up in just seconds with a complete Task Board:

Screenshot of template for planning a virtual marketing event
Click to view this template

This is a more elaborate template, with over 20 separate cards organized into a smooth workflow: Pre-Planning → Launch Preparation → Promotions → Operations.

Each card, representing a significant task, comes with helpful resources (as attachments) and detailed subtasks.  Here’s an example:

Screenshot of an example task
An example task from this template

We have been preparing a number of templates for our users. Most recently we have been focusing on our Marketing and Nonprofit users, but we will also be launching templates for many more jobs, to reflect the broad spread of our users around the world.

Check out the template and let us know if we can improve it!

How to manage a Fundraising Pipeline for Nonprofits

Academic & Nonprofit, Kanban & Lean, Tutorials,

We had previously mentioned our Grant Pipeline for nonprofits; here’s a similar version that our nonprofit users can use to track their fundraising in general.

Screenshot showing Fundraising Profile template
Click to view this template

This simple template lets your nonprofit team track all the fundraising opportunities that are out there, and make sure they get attended to as they go through the process: Prospect → Contacted → Pitch Preparation → Await Response.

As the possible opportunities move through the process, for each opportunity you need to track at least this information:

  1. Name and contact details for donor.
  2. Organization (include specific department or program office if you are dealing with a foundation).
  3. Key motivations: what’s the donor’s known mission, and how does your nonprofit fit within that vision.
  4. Likelihood of donation: this is something that you update as the task moves through the process.
  5. Pitch process: smaller donors may have an information process, but larger donors are likely to have intermediaries like foundations or family offices that have a specific process they like to follow before they will commit to a donation. Make sure you follow their process!
  6. Expected Date: when you think the donor might make a decision.
  7. Fiscal Year: which fiscal year the grant will come in, for your nonprofit.

Check it out and let us know if we can improve it.

How to manage your YouTube video production

Kanban & Lean, Tutorials,

For folks that need to manage production of YouTube videos, we have a helpful template that will set up your Task Board in minutes:

Screenshot showing template for YouTube video production
Click to view this Template

The workflow itself is simple: To Do → Researching → Recording → Editing → Designing Graphics → Scheduled → Done.

We have included useful links and suggestions in the first column to help you if you are new to YouTube video production.  Here’s an example, on how to produce a video description:

Screenshot showing example resource card
YouTube Resources Example

Check it out and let us know if we can improve it.