7️⃣ Kanban Boards: Get an Easy Overview and Work Done

ITONICS Kanban boards utilize cards, columns, and rows to commit innovation, technology, and operational teams to an optimal workload and ensure its completion effectively.

ITONICS Kanban Boards is the tool to keep track of the progress, status, and health of your innovation work. Move projects, ideas, startups, and more through a workflow and efficiently manage them all in one or custom views.

1. Configuring and Saving Board Views
2. Working with the Content on a Board
3. Tips and Tricks for Using Boards

Configuring and Saving Board Views

To access the ITONICS Boards, navigate to the main navigation menu on the left side [1]. Here, you will find all already existing board views that you have created or are publically available. Click on any board view to access it.

Board Configuration and Saving Views

When you want to change a board view, find the "Edit Board" Option at the top right of the board [2]. Clicking on it opens a menu where you can configure the following:

• Board: Navigate to another Board View or save the current view as a new view
• Element Type: Decide which content and element types should be displayed on the board
• Columns: Decide on the property that should be displayed within the column. The values of the property will be displayed as different column headers.
• Swimlanes: Decide on the property that should be displayed within the rows. The values of the property will be displayed as different row headers.
• Card Color: Decide on the property that should be displayed by a colored line on each content card. Different colors will display the values of the property.
• Show Unassigned: This is a checkbox. If toggled, also content elements that do not fit (yet) your row and column values will be displayed, i.e., content elements where the properties have not been filled with values.
• Show Empty Swimlanes: This is a checkbox. If toggled, also rows/the values in rows that do not contain any content element will be displayed as empty rows.

Once you have re-configured your board view, you can decide whether you also want to edit the card configuration, show the legend (i.e., what is represented by the color), and save the view for recurrent usage and collaboration.

To show the legend, you simply need to toggle Legend at the top right of your board view. The legend will appear first at the bottom left, yet you can easily move it around with Drag and Drop [3].

If you have done a re-configuration, it will be shown by the message "unsaved changes", and you will find the option to save your changed view as a new board view at the top right corner. During the saving process, you can decide whether you want:

• to update the view under the current view sharing permission and title> Hit Save, or
• to create a new view with a new title and the option to keep private or share with every user of the workspace > Save as

Once it is saved as a new view, it will be added to the list of the main menu [1] and to the board selection menu under "Edit Boards" [3].

You can also decide whether you want to display all the content cards or just keep the overview [4]. For this, find the collapse icon at the top of the rows.

Card Configuration

Besides configuring the board itself, you also have an option to configure what information is displayed on the cards. By default, a card contains information about the element/content type and the title. 

However, when you move to "Edit cards" [3], you can add up to four more types of values as labels to the card [5]. Simply use the dropdown options to select the properties that should be also displayed on a card.  You can choose between single- and multi-select properties as well as user search fields.

By default, the value assigned is displayed on the card. However, to ease understanding you can also add the title of the property before the value when you use the toggle for Label 1-4 [5]. When you save the board view, the configuration of the cards will be saved alongside the board configuration.

Working with the Content on a Board

Moving content elements and changing values

By using the drag-and-drop functionality, you can easily change the values of all the content displayed on a Board. Just click and hold your mouse on an element card and move it to the desired column. Once there, release the mouse click. If it is a valid move, the Board cell appears with a blue background. If the move is invalid, the Board cell color is shown in red.

Getting more details than displayed on a content card

You can click on each content card to open the respective element in the element stack. This view allows you to directly look at all information, ratings, relations, etc. quickly. In addition, this allows you to make even more changes directly to the content elements.

Tips and Tricks for Using Boards

The benefits of using Boards include the following:

• Keep track of project progress, status, and health and innovation initiatives. 
• Use Boards with any type of Element, e.g., Project, Trend, Technology, Opportunity etc. and visualize workflows.
• Visualize different Elements according to their properties, e.g., phase or TRL to get an overview of your portfolio and the distribution of specific Elements. 
• Drag & drop Elements to change the status or properties of  projects, ideas, startups, and more.  
• Segment your content using columns and add a dimension for structuring content using swimlanes.
• Get an overview or detailed views of your growth initiatives by using filtering options to view what fits your use case. 
• Save specific Board views as presets to use later and share them with colleagues. 
• Visually identify bottlenecks to reduce inefficiencies. 
• Maintain project and team information, and project and health status.
• Monitor progress, respond to changes, and use Boards to report to management.

1. Decide what use case you will use your Board for.

Define an objective for your Board. You can use Boards for ideation, start-up relationship management, project portfolio management, R&D development, and more. Determining this will inform how you use columns and swimlanes to categorize information. Once you have set up your Board, you can scroll Boards vertically and horizontally.

2. Choose segmentation according to your use case. 

Your Boards should reflect the objective of what you are trying to manage and/or monitor. Start simple - you can always add additional columns or swimlanes at a later stage, and with the Board configuration, you can change segmentation to what best works for you and your team. 

Start by using columns that represent your workflow, project phase, project health status, or idea stage. Use swimlanes to define your information further and visualize related items—group information by task type, strategic goals, business unit or team, products, or innovation horizons. For columns and swimlanes, you can see how many Elements are in the respective column or swimlane with the counts displayed. 

3. Save your Board view as a preset.

Presets save time by allowing you to get back to specific views quickly and improves collaboration by sharing specific views easily with colleagues and management. 

Once you have configured your Board view to reflect what you or a particular team are interested in, save your view to use later and share it with colleagues. 

4. Use Element cards to improve collaboration and communication.

Project, Idea, Technology, Opportunity Element cards, and more provide one-click access to additional information about the respective Element. If you are missing attributes on your Elements that can be used on the Columns and Swimlanes of your Board, you can change that by either navigating to Element Configuration, and activating existing single-select list fields for your chosen Element Type. Or, if you are the Application Admin and have access to the Organization Element Configuration, you can create new fields via the Property Configuration. Once created, make them available on the selected Element Type in your Workspace.

Use the Comments function in Element cards when you open them up in the stack, to improve communication. Use the information in Element cards to increase collaboration by using collective Ratings. Attach additional information to the Element to increase participation, improve common understanding, and align decision-making. 

5. Use Element relations and further content within the Element detail card to analyze your innovation portfolio

By connecting your portfolio management, idea stage coordination, emerging technologies, or product management activities to foresight, ideation, and execution phases within innovation, you increase productivity and enhance alignment across global teams. Use the Radar to discover opportunities and risks, Insights to monitor the evolution of drivers of change or discover new developments and market entrants, and use Roadmaps to steer the execution of your innovation projects and programs.