Roadmap vs Kanban Boards slash To Do lists
ref: https://www.3dro.ps/post/roadmap from the people that make onroadmap.com.
Most teams believe they shape their tools to fit their processes. But in reality, it's our tools that influence our processes and dictate our work. You've seen this in our personal lives. How social media can change the way we behave or think.
Kanban board is a great tool to organise your tasks in lists. But is organising tasks in lists the same as prioritising them? How do we prioritise tasks when we don't know their estimates? Every task in these tools look the same. They are all just cards in lists. So regardless if a task takes a day to complete or a month, at a glance, they are no different.
This is why teams came up with hacks like tagging tasks with Priority 1, Priority 2 or Small, Medium, Large. These failed attempts at trying to make these tools do what they weren't designed for is just the proof that they don't work.
I don't think this is true, they are doing what they are designed for, but they aren't good for estimation.
What's the cost of choosing the wrong metrics to track? We focus on the wrong things. In other words, if the tools we use emphasis on the wrong metrics as progress, we set the wrong expectations for our teams. So now, are the number completed tasks an indicator of progress? Or is it just your team's activity?
When there's no order, there's no direction.* So everyone pick what they feel like working on*. As a result, everyone moves in different directions and as a team, little progress is being made. At a glance, the backlog looks half empty. Everyone has completed something. But in reality, they worked on the wrong things at the wrong time.
This is really interesting and related to 7 Habits of Highly effective People.
What do you do when you want to see what your team is currently working on? Drop them a message on Slack? Call a meeting? Scrolling their to-do list is probably the last thing you do. Because how do you know what they are currently working on? Or more importantly, how long they've been working on it?
The lack of transparency in your team's workload is the reason everyone feel stressed. Nobody knows what's next. Nobody can see the connections between the work they are doing now, and the work their colleagues are doing.
This is interesting, also it's interesting to add that most people won't update "what people are doing" list if they aren't in it constantly.
Imagine a place where all of your team's tasks, across all projects, are simply visualised on a timeline so you can see what's been done, how long it took them and what's next.
Seeing how long a task took is actually super helpful. Although it can be embarising to people.
Imagine a place where you can see all your projects tasks, their estimates and milestones are visualised on a timeline so you can prioritise with just drag and drop.
Imagine a place where you can just type your team members name to see what they are currently working on now, their latest status and what's next so you can focus on your own tasks.
This is also super cool, although you can basically do this in Basecamp as well.
My main argument against roadmap is the fact that they tie you down to goal far into the future (see: Options, not roadmaps)