Alright everyone. Today is pretty exciting because we're going to be reviewing
the project management tool Kanbanize (says it completely wrong).
Wait?
Hold on.
It's not come Kan-baN-zee.
It's Kan-bAn-Izz.
Wow. I read that completely wrong.
I accidentally switched the letters I and Z.
That's embarrassing.
I can feel my second grade
teacher's disappointment with my reading skills from here.
Look, in my defense Mrs. Durnette,
it's not a real word.
But it is a real PM service.
Hello, project managers!
I'm Mackenzie, and today I'm reviewing the PM software Kanbanize.
Before we jump into the review, let's do a little history roundup.
Kanbanize was founded back in 2008, and it is the product of Businessmap Ltd,
a private software company
with headquarters in Bulgaria and offices in Spain and Brazil.
Its founders are proponents of lean thinking and continuous
improvement as well as kanban practitioners.
They believe that Kanbanize can help companies
manage big initiatives deployed across multiple teams.
The company's mission is to help people do meaningful work,
which then helps create more room for innovation.
But does Kanbanize actually live up to the company's mission?
Let's go through all of its top features to find out.
Let's start with the obvious.
Kanban boards.
Kanbanize provides users
with kanban boards where they can map workflows and keep track of tasks,
relieve bottlenecks and get accurate status reports.
The visual tool shows full
transparency of work with work items visualized as cards.
Users can create a network of interlinked boards
and connect multiple workflows across the organization.
Its kanban boards enable the management
of dependencies across teams and departments.
This is done easily thanks to the swim lanes that split the boards into sections
and the ability to merge cells across those lanes and columns.
There's also sub columns, card templates and custom board backgrounds.
Along with all of that, Kanbanize cards have several properties and functions to
help users customize work items as needed, including custom fields, subtasks,
custom work item types, configurable task settings, and dependency management.
Teams can use mentions, attach files, send notifications
and use visual tokens to identify blockers or add labels.
Up next is work management features.
Users can customize boards to meet the specific needs of teams.
A multi layer board
allows for multiple workflows for better organization and process
improvement and includes an initiative workflow on top of the swim lane.
Ideal for bigger projects.
The timeline workflow lets users visualize past,
current and future projects in a calendar view.
Other features are policies, service level expectations and WIP limits.
Then there's flexible workspaces which allow teams to distribute
and track work across the organization with increased visibility
in projects as well as connected planning and execution.
The workspaces are ideal for distributing and tracking
work across multiple teams from a single board.
Team workspaces let users bring together different boards to boost collaboration in a department.
And user roles allow admins to create and assign roles with corresponding board
and task permissions.
Fun fact!
Kanbanize includes dashboards with customizable layouts.
Users can create widget only dashboards as informational hubs
to provide summarized reports.
The advanced search tool includes filters so users can search data
by particular category.
The Agile Project Management tool also has project forecasting functionality
that uses specific criteria to derive automatic forecasts.
The built in Monte Carlo simulation feature helps teams determine
how many work items they can complete for a given period of time.
On the side of workflow, analytic tools include visualizations
such as cumulative flow diagrams, cycle time scatter plots,
cycle time heatmaps, cycle time histograms, throughput run charts,
aging WIP and flow efficiency, among others.
All of these help teams analyze performance and optimize process efficiency.
Kanbanize gives users “If-This-Then-That” automation rules
to facilitate everyday work.
It has a drag and drop rule builder that lets users
create conditions that trigger predefined actions such as after creating
a card, after updating said cart or after the status of a child card changes.
Users can introduce different work in progress
limits to reduce the multitasking and keep a steady flow of work.
Teams can set WIP limits per user per column
per lane, per cell or add limits per group or columns.
Kanbanize integrates with many apps and services such as
Power BI, Data Studio, Tableau, Azure and many more.
It also integrates with cloud storage services, development tools
and middleware solutions, with native mobile apps
for iOS and Android.
Overall, I think Kanbanize has a lot of useful features
that can allow teams and organizations to create high level
overviews of their projects and portfolios.
But the UX is a lot different from what I'm used to at least,
so I highly recommend requesting a demo or trying out
its 14 day free trial before committing to a payment plan.
Link is in the description.
Or if you want a more in-depth review of Kanbanize, then go read this article.
And go ahead and ask your fellow project managers about it in the comments below.
But while you're here, be sure to click the like icon, hit the subscribe button
and read more at Project-Management.com for other PM tools.
Thanks for watching!