Regardless of which industry you operate in, you need a highly efficient workflow to achieve all the desired goals without wasting any resources and compromising employee productivity. As a marketing team leader, you might have struggled to balance team workloads and organize tasks well yourself. However, with the right management model at hand, you can easily avoid such problems in the future.
Here’s why you need to apply the Kanban framework – a landmark project management system that visualizes your in-progress works and allows keeping track of all the planned tasks. This framework makes it easy to manage the existing workflows and improve them further. It is what can help your marketing team becomes more productive and agile.
So, let’s find out what Kanban framework for marketing is about, how to integrate this framework in your management process, and which advantages it provides.
What Is Kanban Framework?
Developed by a Japanese engineer, Taiichi Ohno, the Kanban framework is an agile approach to work management. It visualizes projects on a board to increase performance transparency among employees and promote team collaboration.
This methodology is suitable for any size of business and it ensures superior process organization and optimum output. Using Kanban framework for marketing, you will see that task progress is easy to track and workload management becomes a breeze.
In comparison to traditional project management, this framework is efficient yet flexible. It guarantees real-time workflow management at each step of the project, which is vital in finishing a project within an estimated time and budget.
Take a look at an example of the Kanban board below to better grasp how it works.
Marketing Kanban Board Example
Here’s how the Kanban board looks like in actiTIME – a multifunctional time tracking tool for effortless project management:
It has a pretty standard Kanban board appearance and is divided into several columns that represent different stages of the work process:
- New tasks
- In-progress tasks
- Review of work results
- Completed tasks
The best part: in actiTIME, you are free to customize these columns, increase or decrease their number and play around with their names.
At the beginning of a project (or its phase), all the planned tasks are located in the first column of the board. Then, after workloads are distributed across the team and the work sets off, you will gradually move the tasks to the second column (In Progress) and further on.
The goal is to place each task in the right column of the Kanban board, depending on its actual progress status. Thereby, you’ll be able to track what’s been done or what’s left to do without a hitch, make sure there is no task overload and the team adheres to the deadlines.
Benefits of Kanban Framework for Marketing
1. Transparency
The Kanban framework provides better visibility for all the projects. Its visualizes components on the Kanban board. The board has information about the backlog of tasks, the tasks in the process, and deadlines for the projects to be finished. These are represented on Kanban cards, columns, and swimlanes.
With all these crucial pointers on the board, everyone has instant access to the work process. This visual representation ensures transparency within the team and the management. Moreover, it allows the members to see any bottlenecks in the task.
2. Easy management
The traditional method of management involves less planning and assigning work to the employees on the go. This creates a lot of pressure and does not keep in mind the capabilities of an individual.
On the other hand, with the Kanban framework, the team picks up the work in the flow of their completed tasks when they have enough bandwidth to finish those tasks. Each team member functions at a different pace and has other areas of expertise.
The method will work smoothly for multicultural teams across various departments. Moreover, after the work in progress limits are reached in the process, no new work is allowed in the same column until completing the current tasks.
The work-in-progress limits also prevent any team members from working on too many projects at the same time. This lean management system reduces the waste of resources by eliminating non-essential idle tasks that may not add any value to the project.
3. Grater agility
Kanban framework ensures an increase in productivity by focusing on finishing the work. It has a cycle time that measures the time taken to complete the task in one process. Besides, it keeps a consistent check on the total number of tasks in a specific period of time.
More tasks will be completed if they move quickly through a single process. The method also gives essential insights over stalled tasks, bottlenecks, and too much work in progress to take action. This improves the workflow and efficiency within the team.
The elimination of bottlenecks from the tasks makes sure there is a constant flow of work. Moreover, the structure of the framework reduces the time taken to finish a project with the use of cycle time and lead time. The method is a combination of lean and agile values to ensure project success.
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How to Adapt Kanban Framework for Marketing?
1. Build a work backlog
Your management project backlog is the visual representation of all the tasks your team will be able to deliver or not deliver by the end of one process. In most of the Kanban boards, the backlogs are on the left of the table in the To-Do stage.
This first column of the backlog is easily manageable with a small number of tasks. It may get a bit cumbersome with the increase in backlog. So, ensure viewing and scrolling to find the tasks easily.
Moreover, you may add the list view for ranking your team along with the issues. A team member may feel free to focus on the work-in-progress on the board instead of focusing on the different items simultaneously.
2. Visualize storyline columns
Kanban framework visualizes your entire work process, from the very beginning until the end. Your task is to identify different process stages that make sense to your team. They can be as follows: Ready to Start, In-Progress, Under Review, Ready for Revision, Released or Done. Choose any workflow stages that meet your needs best and be sure to dedicate a separate column on the Kanban board for each of them.
3. Set work-in-progress caps
The workflow can be smoother and efficient with limits on the work. It serves as an essential guide to starting a new item from the work log and finishing it in a stipulated time. The visual representation of the total number of projects and work done by the team prevents them from working on several projects at a time.
This helps in reducing lead times and improving the quality of the work. Moreover, it generates more frequent deliveries to get more done.
4. Track time and deadlines
It is vital to monitor how much time is spent on every process in a project and collect credible time tracking data to improve workload planning and inform your task estimation. For this purpose, you may apply either manual-entry timesheets or automatic web-based timers, and both of these time tracking modes are readily available in actiTIME.
In combination with Kanban, accurate time tracking will let you take rogress management to new heights, avoid schedule overruns and maintain optimal team productivity. Explore the key benefits of time tracking for marketing businesses in this informative post.
5. Keep up with release schedules
The goal of the Kanban framework is to make work highly predictable and remove all the factors that may delay it. With an efficient flow of work, the services and deliveries will maximize along with a reduction in lead times.
As no new project is pulled until the completion of the previous one, Kanban ensures continuous delivery of work.
Summary
The primary goal of any project team is to deliver it within the deadline without too many delays. The Kanban framework ensures the marketing team works efficiently with the best use of their abilities and resources. It is all about getting the work done quickly and pushing it until everything is complete.
Instead of just starting the project, the Kanban method focuses more on finishing it with the input of various team members. Also, it prevents the team from picking up more tasks at the same time. Therefore, it increases the workflow and efficiency in one cycle of the same process.
Now that you are familiar with the benefits and method of application of the Kanban framework, it will be easier to reach the deadlines without dreading the delays. It may take a few turns to get used to the new method for the management and team; however, continuous efforts in the right direction will improve work efficiency in the long run.
This article is written for actiTIME by Jay Purohit – a CX enthusiast, expert marketer and Community Manager at Acquire.
