5.3. The lifecycle of a card

When designing the board, the layout depends on the workflow and process you want to reflect. As a general rule, cards move from left to right where the simplest setup of columns is: To Do, In Progress, and Done.

Our proposed setup contains five columns on a Kanban board, and the lifecycle of a card on it is:

1. Backlog When a new Element is newly introduced, it starts on the very left column of the Kanban board, the Backlog. While the card sits on the Backlog, before it is introduced into the next column, all prerequisites of it being worked on in a Sprint need to be fulfilled.

2. To Do In the Sprint planning, based on the priority given by the Product Owner, the team decides which Items and thus cards, will be worked on in the Sprint. These cards are moved from the Backlog into the “To Do” column for the Sprint.

3. In Progress When team members pick a card to work on, they move the card to the “In Progress” column and, if not already the case, add their name to it. You might note that it’s usually the team member who “pulls” the card, as opposed to a top-down approach in which work is pushed to team members. This transparently shows all team members that the respective Item is being worked on and whom to approach if questions come up.

4. Wait Sometimes a team member cannot proceed with an Item because they are waiting for outside input, e.g. a response from a court or other public body, an approval or input from the client. In that case, they can place the respective card in the “Wait” column to show that they have all to be done on their side at this moment and are waiting for input to be able to continue.

5. Done Once all work on an Item has been done, the attorney responsible reviews whether they can confirm the Item meets the Definition of Done. If so, they move the card over to the “Done” column. Note that, if an Element is not needed anymore, or the strategy changes, it can also be deleted. Cards can also move backwards, not just forwards. First, this allows the use of columns such as “Wait”, which require cards to be able to move back and forth (e.g. from “Wait” back into “In Progress” when the outside input has arrived and work on the card resumes). Then, in a law firm setting this method can be used for example when law firm employees reassign a task to the attorney who needs to check it (e.g. from associate “In Progress” to attorney responsible “To Do”) before it goes to the client.

Practice Tip: when to add details to a Kanban card

A card on the Backlog may be quite short; it just needs to be understandable enough that the team knows what it is about. When, during a Sprint Planning, a card is chosen to be addressed in the specific Sprint, that means it will be moved to the “To Do” and the details of the specific Item will be added. The most important thing is that the card includes all information that the people need to get working.

Practice Tip: Kanban without Sprints

A Kanban board with cards that represent Items or Tasks can also be used without a Sprint setup. In this simplified case, the attorney adds tasks to the “Backlog” and discusses with the team which of them are the current “To Do” Items. In this case, it would also be possible for the team members to pull Items out of the “Backlog” when they are finished with all their cards that were in the “To Do” column.

Practice Tip: Solo Kanban

Due to the versatility of Kanban, it can also be used for one person to organise themselves. In cases where simple to-do lists have become too elaborate, hard to prioritise, or too many are blocked by other people, a Kanban board can also help a solo attorney organise their work.

Story

Formalized freedom

Having decided that the full granularity is not always needed, creates a feeling of relief. What briefly seemed like an unsurmountable task is now in clear reach, yet the next obstacle is right around the corner. They have the cards, but where do they fit? That’s the next question Fiona and Gabriel will need to resolve, with Alice giving them free reign once again. If they had been asked for their honest opinion, they would have probably admitted that they’d gladly accept a predefined set of cards for a litigation procedure as preparation. On top of the details every type of Element contains, they soon realize that these contents can be replicated for other projects. They figure they could, over time, create a set of standard Elements and cards for certain projects they deal with again and again. But first, they get their hands dirty and get going with the task at hand.

Whilst they did not do any formal Sprint planning (yet), they need to organise the cards. So, they prioritize what’s needed for the project first, have a look at dependencies, and do a rough estimate how long it would take. What can be achieved within the next week before their next team meeting? Those would be the cards they would make sure are ready and place in the “To Do” column. Everything else would be parked in the Backlog. Then they decide together which Item each of them would work on that day.

Getting started on the matter, Fiona takes the Item: “Draw an overview of all parties involved in the case, including their position and relevance” as her next one. Gabriel, having a smaller work load, takes the somewhat more work-intense Item: “Identify the people able to provide detailed information on relevant issues and interview them“.

This second Item includes an activity that their assistant Oliver would usually do: organise the actual meetings. Gabriel thinks of assigning this Item to himself, but they ask Oliver to take over this assignment. Since the first Task of the Item is identifying the right people and writing them down, which sits with Gabriel, Oliver’s task will depend on them being finished. Gabriel revisits his notes from the initial discussion with Bob and Caleb and recalls that they suggested having an electrician in the client’s team. He thinks that there might be additional people at Horizontal Builders who could have useful insight, maybe a person handling claims and/or another person involved on site in Caleb’s team. They need a meeting to include Fiona and himself, along with all the other identified people at Horizontal with insight into what could have gone wrong. Gabriel walks over to Oliver’s office and explains where they stand. Oliver adds this as another task and puts it into “In Progress”, Gabriel puts his task, to identify the people, into “Wait”.

Later, when Fiona and Gabriel return to the board, Gabriel assigns himself a new card, Oliver joins them noting that he hasn’t heard back yet about the proposed dates, so they move the card to the “Wait” column, as they cannot do anything from their side at the moment and are rather just waiting for external input.

Two days later, they have the meeting with the client’s key persons and Gabriel moves the card “Identify the people able to provide detailed information on relevant issues and interview them” back to “In Progress”, with Gabriel taking ownership and working on the last Task: summarizing what they have learnt. Once he’s done, he adds a small Post-it with Fiona’s name and puts the card back to “To Do”, adding another Post-it: “@Fiona: please check whether you have something to add to my notes”.

Later when Fiona goes back to the board and is happy to see the work has progressed this far. She picks the card Gabriel has left her and opens his file to start her review. After adding a few minor details, she goes back to the board and moves the card to the “Done” column.

The next morning when the whole team meets, they explain to Alice and Oliver how this example card has moved and Fiona notes for the whole team’s transparency that this Item is done. They find that the process is more formalized than their traditional e-mail messages, but it certainly helps the transparency and gives the team members more flexibility.

Example

In this example we show you how the workflow of a card can look like:

Step 1: A card describing an Item is added to the Backlog.

Step 2: During their weekly team meeting, the team checks all required details are on the cards and puts it to “To Do” to be worked on within this Sprint.

Step 3: Fiona pulls the card out of the “To Do” and works on the Item.

Step 4: After Fiona has finished the task, she assigns it to the Alice, the attorney responsible, for review, and moves it to “To Do”.

Step 5: When Alice starts working on the card, she pulls it into “In Progress”.

Step 6: Alice asks the client’s project manager Bob for confirmation of facts and moves the card to “Wait” for the time waiting for a reply.

Step 7: When the reply from Bob comes in, Alice pulls the card back to “In Progress” and makes the required changes. Step 8: Once these are finished, Alice moves the card into “Done”.