Tag Archives: Kanban

About Kanban. See also Lean.

Using Kerika, but not using English

Agile & Scrum, Technology, , , , , , ,

Right now, the Kerika user interface is entirely in English, but we have users worldwide and many of them use Kerika with other languages, e.g. Greek, Japanese, Korean, etc.

When you export data from a Task Board or Scrum Board that includes non-English characters, the foreign characters are actually preserved correctly as part of the exported data, but if you need to then import data into some other program, like Microsoft Word or Excel, you need to make sure the other program correctly correctly interprets the text as being in UTF-8 format.

WHY UTF-8?

UTF-8 is a coding standard that can handle all possible characters, so it works with languages like Greek, Japanese, etc. which don’t use the Roman alphabet.

For a long time now, UTF-8 has been the only global standard that works across all languages, because of its inherent flexibility in handling different character sets.

When you do an export of data from a Kerika Task Board or Scrum Board, we create the CSV files in UTF-8 format, and include what’s called the Byte Order Mark (BOM) in the first octect of the exported file.

Including a BOM is the best way to let all kinds of third-party programs know that the file is encoding in UTF-8: it’s a standard way of saying to other programs, “Hey, guys! This text may contain non-English characters.”

And for the most part, including a BOM works just fine with CSV exports from Kerika: Google Spreadsheets interprets that correctly, Microsoft Excel on Windows interprets that correctly, but not…

EXCEL ON MACS

Many version of Excel for Macs, going back to Office 2007 at least, have a bug that doesn’t correctly process the BOM character. Why this bug persisted for so long is a mystery, but there we are…

The effect of this bug is that an exported file from Kerika, containing non-English characters, will not display correctly inside Excel on Mac, although it will display correctly with other Mac programs, like the simple Text Edit.

There’s not much we can do about this bug, unfortunately.

THE TECHNICAL BACKGROUND TO ALL THIS:

BOMs are used signify what’s called the “endianess” of the file.

Endianess is a really ancient concept: in fact, most software developers who learned programming in the last couple of decades have no idea what this is about.  You can learn about endianess from Wikipedia; the short summary is that when 8-bit bytes are combined to make words, e.g. for 32-bit or 64-bit microprocessors, different manufacturers had adopted one of two conventions for organizing these bytes.

For Big-Endian systems the most significant byte was in the smallest address space, for Little-Endian systems the most significant byte was in the largest address space.

(If you have a number like 12345, for example, the “1” is the most significant digit and the “5” is the least significant. In a Big-Endian system this would be stored as “1 2 3 4 5”; in a Little-Endian system it would be stored as “5 4 3 2 1”. So, when you get presented with any number, you really need to know which of the two systems you are using, because the interpretation of the same digits would be wildly different.)

(About a dozen years ago Joel Spolsky, former PM for Excel, wrote a great article on the origins and use of BOM, for those who want to learn more about the technical details.)

Why this affects Kerika at all? Because when you do an export of cards from Kerika, the export job is run on a virtual machine running on Amazon Web Services.

We have no idea what kind of physical hardware is being used by AWS, and we are not supposed to care either: we shouldn’t have to worry about whether we are generating the CSV file using a little- or big-endian machine, and whether the user is going to open that file with a little- or big-endian machine.

That’s the whole point of using UTF-8 and a BOM: to make it possible for files to be more universally shared.

Lock Canvas: a new feature

Agile & Scrum, Technology, Usability, , , ,

With our latest release we are adding a feature that will make it easier for folks to create, and maintain, very elaborate Whiteboards: any team member can lock a canvas to discourage other team members from making changes.

This isn’t a very complicated function; it has a very simple purpose: if you have been working hard on a particular canvas, which could be a stand-alone Whiteboard, part of a series of nested canvases in a Whiteboard, or attached to a card on a Task Board or Scrum Board, you may become worried that other team members might come by to visit your board and carelessly make changes to your pristine creation.

(After all, we creative types can get really possessive about our beautiful canvases :-)!)

To discourage others from making changes, just click on the lock button that appears to the far end of the Canvas toolbar:

For Team Members, this is a “soft lock”: any canvas that’s locked by one Team Member can be unlocked by any other Team Member, so you are not really shutting out people from making changes, merely discouraging them by signalling that you would like to preserve a canvas in a particular way.

Canvas locked by Team Member
Canvas locked by Team Member

But for Project Leaders, this is a “hard lock”: if a Project Leader locks a canvas, it can be unlocked only by another Project Leader. (Remember: projects can have more than one Project Leader!)

Canvas locked by Project Leader
Canvas locked by Project Leader

So, if a canvas gets to a truly pristine state that you want to preserver forever, have the Project Leader lock it, and the rest of the team will be able to view it but not make changes.

And, of course, if canvases are embedded (nested) inside each other, each canvas can be locked or unlocked, as you like, giving you maximum flexibility.

Switching between open projects

Agile & Scrum, Technology, Usability, , , ,

When you have expanded your view of a Kerika board to fill up the browser, using the “Max View” button on the top-right corner of the Kerika app

Max View button
Max View button

Another button appears on the top-right, to help you quickly switch between all your open project tabs, as well as get to your Home Page:

Switching between tabsThis button is color coded to help you understand, at a glance, what’s going on in all your open projects:

  • If any of your open projects has an overdue card, then the button appears in red.
  • If any of your open projects has updates that you haven’t seen yet, the button appears in orange.
  • If any of your open projects has new cards that you haven’t seen yet, the button appears in blue.

Clicking on the button shows a list of all your open projects, along with your Home Page:

Switching between tabs
Switching between tabs

The little green arrow (shown above at the top) points to the currently open tab, the one that you are viewing right now.

Projects have a blue icon; templates have a purple icon: in the example above, Statewide Tennis Shoe Distribution is a template, while all the others are projects.

  • Boards with unread updates have orange titles, like Health Services above.
  • Boards with overdue cards have red titles, like Release Note Proof of Concept above.
  • Boards with new (unseen) cards have blue titles, like Statewide Tennis Shoe Distribution above.

You can reorganize your list of open tabs by simply dragging them up or down this list.

(But, the Home Page is always on the top; that can’t be moved.)

You can also close an open project tab that you are no longer interested in by clicking on the “X” to the right edge of the entry.

So, there’s a simple visual consistency in Kerika’s design:

  • Blue = New
  • Orange = Changed
  • Red = Overdue

Change Shape: a new feature

Agile & Scrum, Technology, , , , ,

We finally got around to adding a feature to the Canvas that we have wanted for a while, but somehow never got around to building: now, with a single click, you can change a shape on a canvas, whether it is in a Whiteboard project or attached to a card on a Task Board or Scrum Board:

Change Shape
Change Shape

Here’s why you might need this: often when you are first creating a process flow diagram, you might use shapes — rectangles, ellipses, diamonds — in an arbitrary or careless way, which is just fine because at that time you are trying to be creative rather than meticulous.

But, as the canvas takes shape and matures, you might want to go back and standard the use of particular shapes (even if you don’t strictly follow the old conventions for drawing flowcharts, which we don’t either).

This new function makes it easy for you to select a bunch of shapes and change them all to a new shape. Previously, you had to create a new shape and put it in place to replace the old shape, which was pretty inconvenient when you had a bunch of nested canvases and a bunch of curved lines connecting all the shapes.

Easy, now.

Using the right-click menu in Kerika

Agile & Scrum, Technology,

Maybe this isn’t obvious after all… We just realized that a long-time Kerika user (over 3 years of using Kerika on a daily basis!) didn’t know that there is a right-click menu available in Kerika!

If you move your mouse over a card on Task Board or Scrum Board and press the right mouse button, this is what you will see:

Right mouse menu
Right mouse menu

This menu is handy for selecting all the cards in a column, which you can then grab and drag over to another column or even mark as Done.

When the “Honey Do” list goes online

Agile & Scrum, Kanban & Lean, , ,

Remember Heather & Jason?

Jason & Heather
Jason & Heather

They were the happy couple that planned their wedding using Kerika!

(We were reminded of the thanks to a recent Harvard Business Review article on using Kanban to manage your personal life.)

Well, the last time we saw Jason, we asked him how the wedding had gone, and he said it went beautifully!

Heather was new to the whole Kanban concept, but Kerika helped her understand all the moving parts that needed to come together just right for a great wedding, and she liked the experience so much that their house chores are now organized and managed online.

In other words, the “Honey Do” list has now gone online!

Free Box accounts don’t support direct downloading of files

Agile & Scrum, Technology, , , ,

When you add files to your Kerika+Box projects, either as attachments to cards on Task Boards or Scrum Boards, or on canvases and Whiteboards, these get stored in your Box account.

If you have a premium (enterprise) version of Box, you can directly download these attachments, instead of having to go through Box’s preview display first: just hover over an attached file, and you will see a “download” button appear:

Directly downloading files from Box
Directly downloading files from Box

This works fine for enterprise users of Box, but if you are using the free version of Box, you will see a Box error page, like this:

Box download error
Box download error

Keeping track of status changes in Card History

Agile & Scrum, Technology, , , , ,

We are starting to realize that a card’s status, e.g. “Ready for Review,” “Needs rework,” etc. is pretty important not just in terms of what they show about a card’s current state, but also in terms of its history.

Previously, we weren’t tracking changes to a card’s status as part of the card’s history; without our latest release, that’s now a feature, so if you are wondering who put a card “On Hold”, you can just open the card’s History and Kerika will tell you:

Card status in history
Card status in history

 

When you copy and paste a project, do you want the team too?

Agile & Scrum, Kanban & Lean, Team Collaboration, , , ,

Here’s a new feature we are adding: when you copy and paste an entire project from one account to another, you can decide whether to take the team as well.

Consider these two scenarios:

  • Alice makes a copy of a project that she owns and pastes it right back into her own account. (Why? Well, maybe she wanted to make a backup copy, or maybe the actual project was going to split into two parallel efforts and so copying-and-pasting the entire project makes sense.)
  • Bob makes a copy of a project that Alice owns, and pastes it in his own account. (Of course, to do this Bob would need to have access to Alice’s project in the first place.)

In the first scenario, the duplicated project is showing up in the same account as it was before, so Kerika assumes that the team should be copied as well: in other words, “Project A” and “Copy of Project A” will both have the same team, at least to start with although each version of the board may then change its project teams independently of each other.

In the second scenario, however, it’s a little more murky: did Bob just want to copy the cards and canvases of Alice’s project, or is he trying to actually set up the same project in his own account? It’s hard for Kerika to make a really good guess in this scenario, so the system asks you:

If Bob responds “Yes” to this question, his copy of Alice’s project will also come with all the team members who were originally working on Alice’s project.

Of course, this might mean that Bob is now adding some folks to his account team: people he hadn’t worked with before.  These people are added automatically to Bob’s account team if he wants to take the team along with the project.

Adding images to canvases: differences between Google and Box

Agile & Scrum, Technology, Usability, , , ,

Kerika+Google, our integration with Google Drive, and Kerika+Box, our integration with Box, are very similar in terms of user interface, but the underlying cloud storage platforms are different in some subtle ways.

One of these has to do with the way images that are added to a canvas are named: when you add an image to a canvas, either by using the Upload button or simply by dragging and dropping the image from your desktop onto the canvas, Kerika will show a small thumbnail of the image on your canvas.

The thumbnails provided to Kerika by Google are better than those provided by Box in a couple of ways:

  1. Box’s thumbnails are square, which can result in a cropped view of the image; Google’s thumbnails show the entire image.
  2. Google’s thumbnails can be resized nicely on the Kerika canvas, simply by selecting it and then dragging on one of the corners; Box’s can’t.
  3. If you rename a Google thumbnail and take off the original file extension, e.g. you rename “picture.jpg” to be just “picture”, the thumbnail still renders correctly, but Box’s doesn’t. (Because Box relies on the file extensions to detect the file’s MIME-type.)

There are some other quirks with the way Box and Google work, but most of them are going to be invisible to most Kerika users.