Imagine for a second that you are trying to start a project and you have all the details regarding the project management processes. They are noted down on a piece of paper lying somewhere in the empty recesses of your most important drawer.
Everything that you can need for the whole project is noted down but there is no structure to it; everything is haywire, and also there is no visualization cue to support your client’s vision regarding workflow.
What would you do then? You need to create Task Boards and proceed according to tasks’ priority statuses.
Task boarding is the quickest way to get a multifaceted and complex project on a track whose elements have no structure.
In this article, we are going to talk about Task boarding, what are they, what their importance is, what an agile task board is and what some other types of task boards are. Let’s take a look.
What are Task Boards?
A task board is defined as a visual aid to better understand every task and process related to your project development process. It doesn’t even have to be a complex thing.
It can even be a plain whiteboard with all of your tasks and processes mentioned on it or it can be a digital Kanban board with many other functionalities like you get in project management applications like nTask.
What is the Importance of Task Boards?
Task boards are amazing in helping different project managers in the organizational paradigm to plan, execute and repeat the project development process with definite success.
This is possible when they work on the right tasks at the right moment in time so that their work has the most impact and they succeed in achieving more value for their company.
Task boards can help them do all of that in a few different ways like:
- Task boards can also be used as a tool for performing project management activities easily and without obstructions. Any type of business or project will benefit from a task board because of its complex and amazing features and functionalities regarding project management.
A major benefit of the task board is that it easily stores information on a lot of different projects, which makes it a perfect tool for companies to manage all of their projects.
- Task boards are an amazing collaboration tool that companies can use to make sure that all of their employees and stakeholders are in constant communication with each other, whether they are located in a physical location together or not.
This happens when you share all of the tasks on a Kanban board or another task boarding interface like you get in nTask, where all of the team members can see what everyone has to do and there are no gaps in communication.
- Task boards are an incredible tool for an organization because they make sure that every right thing is happening at the right time, which will help make sure that the company gains value, and that no effort is wasted.
- Task boards are also an incredible tool for waste reduction. You know that doing the right things at the right time is a crucial part of reducing waste. Whether you are working using one method of production or some other method, nobody likes waste, and task boarding helps us do that.
- Task boarding is also an amazing tool for empowerment. They help make sure that every employee in the company is valued and they can own the work that they are performing for the company.
Task boarding is not restrictive in any regard and anyone with access to the whole interface can see what they have to do and what everyone has to do. This transparency and openness help the employees feel empowered and open to exploration.
- Task boards are also an incredible source of improvement. This improvement can be learning from the mistakes that you do in a current project development process, or which you have done in the past. This helps you to create a more detailed and fail-proof product development process that will help you achieve success almost every time.
What are the Types of Task Boards?
There are two different types of task boards as mentioned below:
- Personal Task Boards
- Team Task Boards
Let’s take a look at both of them in detail and find out what sets them apart.
1. Personal Task Boards
The first category of task boards that we are going to discuss in this article is personal task boards. These boards contain every task and activity that each professional has to do in their daily, weekly, or monthly routine.
These task boards can also be used to make sure that every task and activity that you perform in your personal life is also monitored.
For the language of a personal task board, it is up to the one who uses it. You can always keep your task boards extremely professional, but if a task board is not professionally categorized but still serves its purpose, it is acceptable.
Usually, the personal task boards that are used around the world have a simple design that includes just a few columns differentiating the different stages of the project development process or the overall project process.
The main benefit of using a personal task board is that you can easily manage all of the tasks and processes assigned to you, according to your needs and requirements, and without disturbing anybody.
This will also help you to rearrange the order of execution of the tasks if there is a chance of any unforeseen circumstances happening.
2. Team Task Boards
If you want to make every task and process that is a part of the project development process being worked on by an amazing team of professionals, transparent, then you need to use a Team Task Board.
These task boards are amazingly detailed and quite necessary because it mirrors the exact development steps that your team members are following while working on their assignments related to the project.
These team task boards also help you to monitor the progress of all of the work items that are currently being developed as a part of the project development process.
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What is an Agile Task Board?
The Agile project management methodology is a process in which all of the big tasks that are a part of the project development process are broken down into smaller bite-sized chunks so that the development staff can easily perform them without any obstacles or difficulty.
It’s “Agile” because of how people related to the process can easily come and perform their tasks and processes without any difficulty, fitting in one puzzle piece at a time, without damaging the neighbors.
An Agile process is the one that defines all of the items that are supposed to be done in a sprint and makes sure that it creates a repeatable or recurring process that all of the team members can learn and understand their potential and how much they can achieve.
There are a lot of different studies taking place in the world of project management every day, but one of them that caught our mind, regarding the Agile project management methodology, is that the Agile projects are more than 28% more effective than other projects.
You can also incorporate many different agile strategies into your project management systems if you are not using the complete agile methodology to perform your project development process.
Who Uses Task Boards?
Here are some of the departments and the industries that use task boards daily.
- Task Boards are most commonly used by software development team members and departments. They use them because the tasks and processes that they perform daily, as part of the project development process, are constantly changing and evolving. That’s why task boarding and task management apps like nTask help them to task control and keep everything on a tight leash.
- Task boards are also used by interactive agencies. These agencies manage different online brands to create new web projects for their clients, and task boards help them to manage and consolidate everything they do for their clients daily.
- These boards are also used for Business development. Businesses from all over the world have many different tools that help them to track different customer data passing through their servers and also the potential leads for their businesses.
On a related note, task boards can be perfect extensions for these tools so that all of their data is tracked and easily managed.
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FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)
1. What is a task board in agile?
In easier words, the task board is a physical board on which the user stories which make up the current sprint backlog, along with their constituent tasks, are displayed. Usually, this is done with index cards or post-it notes. The task board is usually divided into columns.
2. What is a task in Scrum?
Tasks are the smallest unit used in the scrum to track work. A task should be completed by one person on the team, though the team may choose to pair up when doing the work. Typically, each user story will have multiple associated tasks.
3. What is the major difference between task board and Kanban?
Kanban is not limited to an iteration or sprint—it’s more likely to support continuous delivery. Teams continue working on tasks as they come in.
4. Who is responsible for the Scrum Board?
The scrum master is the role responsible for gluing everything together and ensuring that scrum is being done well. In practical terms, that means they help the product owner define value, the development team deliver the value, and the scrum team gets better.
5. What is a burndown plan?
A burndown chart or burn-down chart is a graphical representation of work left to do versus time. The outstanding work (or backlog) is often on the vertical axis, with time along the horizontal. Burn-down charts are run charts of outstanding work. It is useful for predicting when all of the work will be completed.
6. Is Kanban agile or lean?
Kanban is a visual-based agile framework with a focus on optimizing the flow of work in a continuous delivery manner.
Conclusion
This was a short guide on what task boards are and what they include. If you think that we mentioned something factually incorrect or if you think that we should’ve mentioned something which is missing in the article, contact us and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
