Add Screenshots to your Kanban Cards
Today, Kanban is not only a term in production or logistics. While invented in the early 1950's by Toyota, it's more and more implemented by agile software development teams over the world.
Basics of Kanban (you can skip it if you already know Kanban)
The Kanban JIT method takes place on a real, physical kanban table. That's one part which can be seen as not optimal for distributed teams which are often the norm in modern startups. Many tools evolved solving this specific issue, some to name: Trello, Kanbanize, Kanban Tool or the beatiful Blossom. This is just a short excerpt as the market is really crowded and there are hundreds of tools out there waiting for your team :-)
The basic principle of Kanban is to have a limited amount of colums (in the example image below: Requested, In Progress, Done) with a limited amount of so called cards (like the entry "Toggle admin view" in the Done column). The cards travel from one column to the next (or to the previous, if they fail).
How to apply Kanban to Software / Web Development
Let's start with an example. You are in the middle of an project - a shop system for cat tracking devices (There is no such thing you say? It is: Tractive).
Imagine your customer wants to change the main headline.
You will get a mail / phone call: "Please change the headline".
You create a card in the column Requested and probably add some more details for your developers (like that the font size should be reduced)
During your next iteration the card will be placed in the In Progress column, the text will be changed and probably verified by your customer.
Everything is ready. The card is in the Done column and you can enjoy a cold beverage!
Not that complicated, you say? What if you forget to write the information into the card on which page the headline should be changed? In this case, developers need to ask you and the communication loop starts.
Solve the Problem with Screenshots in your Kanban Cards
Next time your customer calls about any change, prepare a screenshot of the situation and attach it to the Kanban card. Everyone now knows which issue needs to be fixed right away.
This card is concise and easy to fix now - have a look how it looks in Trello:
"Sounds like a lot of work to do. Creating a screenshot, annotating the issue, creating a card, writing the card, attaching the screenshot. I'll be better off with a call."Â
Yes. It's more work to do, but you don't need to do this for yourself. There are tools which automatically create cards with screenshots in your Kanban software - check out Usersnap, it supports over 20 different tools.
What to add to your cards next?
Once you have a nice screenshot in your cards (which your devs will love for sure) you will want to add even more information. The screen size, the browser version and the URL where the issue happened. Start enriching your Kanban cards with more and more information to make it easier to fix bugs and ship faster!