Planning Blox now includes Kanban for easier project and task management.
Planning Blox, an end-to-end solution for Legal Project Management, matter planning, legal service delivery, budgeting and matter reporting, is pleased to announce the availability of Kanban Boards.
How Does Kanban Apply to Managing Matters?
Kanban has its roots in managing inventory and tasks to completion by simply moving “cards”, which represent components or tasks, along a board matching a pre-defined process. This pre-defined process is represented by columns which are the stages or steps in the process.
As applied to legal matters this approach is not exactly as used in the historical Kanban “just-in-time” approach used in auto-manufacturing, however, the concept and ease of moving tasks through a process is very applicable. Kanban’s visual and tactile nature make it easy to manage and coordinate legal tasks and teams.
Kanban within Planning Blox can be used in many ways, from managing project plans to managing personal to-do lists.
Kanban for Project and Task Management
Planning Blox allows for easy creation of project plans (simplified or very detailed) using “blocks”, either starting free-form or from firm-defined templates. These project plans and their tasks can subsequently be viewed in a Kanban Board, pulling a subset of the plan’s tasks which match the chosen criteria (for example, all tasks due in the upcoming weeks or all tasks related to a specific deliverable).
Using simple drag-and-drop, each plan’s task items can be moved along a pre-defined process from “Ready to Begin” to “In Progress”, then to “In Review” (if needed) and “Complete”. As the tasks/cards move along the process, each item is updated with its status both on the Kanban Board and in the Project Plan. Therefore, when an item is moved to “Complete”, Planning Blox knows this item is 100% complete and updates the linked project plan for that task.
Managing this focused subset of tasks of an overall project plan allows legal teams to easily visualize and stay on top of deliverables and tasks, and to more easily document changes in scope. Kanban also provides a readymade tool to help facilitate matter team meetings.
Kanban for Administrative and Ad Hoc Task Management
Kanban within Planning Blox is not limited to matter project plans. Another example of Kanban’s value is the management of administrative tasks such as onboarding, scoping, or any type of checklist/free-form tasks. These can be repeatable for each matter or unique to each matter.
Kanban for Personal To-Do Lists
Planning Blox already provides personal to-do lists across matters, so that a professional can view their current and upcoming assigned tasks. Kanban allows yet another visualization and management method for these person-specific task lists, and movement of the tasks again can update the underlying matter project plans for easier distribution of project plan upkeep.
Tools for Delivering Value to Clients
At Planning Blox, we’re excited to see where firms will go with our Kanban features, whether only on certain matters or across portfolios of matters. The underlying technology is extremely easy to use, and can be helpful in brain storming, scoping and even resource allocation. We look forward to working with our customers to implement Kanban methods around each firm’s unique processes and use cases.
Kanban is yet another innovative way many of our customers are using Planning Blox to deliver value to their clients, along with our established matter financial monitoring, budgeting, easy alerts and client ready reporting. All of our customers love having the ability to use any or all of the Project Management (including Kanban) features when needed for delivering the full matter service delivery expected by a legal team’s clients. Contact Planning Blox to learn more or for a quick demo.
