Cards

Cards

• Context of a card's title retained due to grandparent and parent title also being displayed.
• Details of a particular card can be reached via unique URL based on card ID (i.e. Kanbanara-12345), thereby allowing a direct link.
• Attachments can be made to a card.
• Partial inline editing.

Such cards can be chained together with a simple parent-child relationship. Although a parent can have many children, a child can have only one parent. Placeholder

Cards not participating on a particular kanban board are shown as placeholders.

Each card represents a work item. It doesn?t matter if the work item is a task or a user story.

Card context retained due to grandparent and parent title being displayed as required.

Details of a particular card can be reached via unique URL based on card ID (i.e. ABC-12345), thereby allowing direct link.

A card changed in the last 24 hours will be shown slightly rotated on the kanban board to indicate the same.

Card Types

A card placed on the kanban board can be of any one of nine types:

• Epic - TO BE COMPLETED
• Feature - TO BE COMPLETED
• Story - TO BE COMPLETED
• Enhancement - A card of type ‘enhancement? is like a story but specifically for an enhancement.
• Defect - A card of type ‘defect? is like a story but specifically for a defect.
• Task - A card of type ‘task? would be a child to a story, enhancement or defect type card.
• Test - TO BE COMPLETED
• Bug - TO BE COMPLETED
• Transient - A card of type ‘transient’ would be a temporary card.

All cards or just those of a particular type can be shown on the kanban board.

Such cards can be hierarchically chained together with a simple parent-child relationship. Although a parent can have many children, a child can have only one parent.

Card Attributes

Many attributes can be assigned to each card:

• _id
• Actual Cost
• Actual Cost History
• Actual Time
• Actual Time History
• Affects Version
• Artifacts
• Award
• Blocked
• Blocked Until
• Blocks Parent
• Broadcast
• Bypass Review
• Categories
• Class of Service
• Comments
• Continued From
• Continued In
• Co-Owner
• Co-Quality Analyst
• Co-Reviewer
• Creator
• CRM Case
• Customer
• Deadline
• Deferred
• Deferred Until
• Depends Upon
• Description
• Difficulty
• Emotion
• Escalation
• Estimated Cost
• Estimated Cost History
• Estimated Time
• Estimated Time History
• Expedite
• External Hyperlink
• External Reference
• Facilitates (formerly Before)
• Fix Version
• Focus History
• Hashtags
• HiddenUntil
• Hierarchy
• ID
• Iteration
• Last Changed
• Last Changed By
• Last Poked
• Last Poked By
• Last Touched
• Last Touched By
• MMRs (Minimum Marketable Releases)
• Mode
• Next Action
• Notes
• Owner
• Parent
• Prerequisites (formerly After) (This is the equivalent of a ‘Blocked By’ attribute which Kanbanara does not possess)
• Priority
• Project
• Qualitative Urgency (One half of Qualitative Cost of Delay)
• Qualitative Value (One half of Qualitative Cost of Delay)
• Quality Analyst
• Reassign Co-Owner
• Reassign Co-Quality Analyst
• Reassign Co-Reviewer
• Reassign Owner
• Reassign Quality Analyst
• Reassign Reviewer
• Recurring
• Release
• Resolution
• Reviewer
• Root Cause Analysis
• Severity
• Source
• Start By
• State
• State History
• Status
• Stuck
• Subteam
• Tags
• Test Cases
• Title
• Type
• Unplanned
• Votes

Custom Attributes

Any number of user-defined custom attributes can be added to all cards in a particular project. Just define the custom attributes within the project itself and every time you add, update or view a card in that project, such custom attributes will appear and be editable.

Card Menu

Each card on the kanban board posseses a popup menu that allows you to do the following:

• View - Allows all the attributes of an individual card to be viewed.
• Update - Allows an individual card to be updated.
• Hierarchy
• Execute Rules - Trigger all the rules associated with a particular card.
• Give Focus - Declares that an individual card has your undivided attention.
• Touch - Allows you to ‘touch’ a card thus indicating to others that you have not forgotten about it.
• Poke - If you are the owner or coowner of a card which is in a review or QA state, this menu option allows you to poke the reviewers or quality analysts. The poke flag will be subsequently cancelled should the card be touched or updated or dragged and dropped upon a new state.
• Add Substory - Allows a child sub-story to be added to a story card.
• Add Task - Allows a child task to be added to a card.
• Add Test - Allows a child test to be added to a card.
• Add Defect - Allows a child defect to be added to a card.
• Add Bug - Allows a child bug to be added to a card.
• Attach - Allows you to upload and attach a file to an individual card.
• Split Story - Allows you to split a story in half.
• Internals - Allows you to display all the attributes of a card including the internal ones.
• Delete - Allows you to delete an individual card (if project’s ‘Allow Card Deletions’ setting enabled).
• JSON - Allows you to display all the attributes of a card in JSON format.
• Expedite - Allows a card to be rendered expedited
• Unexpedite - Allows the current expedited card for a project to be rendered unexpedited.
• Top - Move card to top within those cards with same state, priority and type on kanban board.
• Up - Move card up one within those cards with same state, priority and type on kanban board.
• Down - Move card down one within those cards with same state, priority and type on kanban board.
• Bottom - Move card to bottom within those cards with same state, priority and type on kanban board.
• Transfer - Allows a card for which you are the owner to be moved from one project to any other in which you are a member. If the card was previously a member of this project, an attempt will be made to retain its previous ID.
• Continue [Only available in final state] - Allows a closed card to be continued in another project in which you are a member.

Adding or Updating a Card

If you have been invited onto a project as a guest, you will be able to view any card but can not add a new one or update an existing one.

Unlike other project management systems, Kanbanara has no notion of a read only kanban board. The ‘editableby’ attribute to each card ensures only those allowed to do so can edit an individual card. The settings of the editableby attribute indicate which edit groups are able to edit an individual card. By default, each card will be assigned the following edit groups:

• Creator - This edit group allows editing by the team member who created an individual card.
• ProjectManagers - This edit group allows editing by the project manager or deputy project manager.
• OwnerSelfAssignable - This edit group allow a team member to self-assign themselves as a card’s owner when such an unassigned card reaches an appropriate owner state. Just click on the ‘Assign To Me’ button within an individual card’s menu
• QualityAnalystSelfAssignable - This edit group allow a team member to self-assign themselves as a card’s quality analyst when such an unassigned card reaches a QA state. Just click on the ‘Assign To Me’ button within an individual card’s menu.
• ReviewerSelfAssignable - This edit group allow a team member to self-assign themselves as a card’s reviewer when such an unassigned card reaches a review state. Just click on the ‘Assign To Me’ button within an individual card’s menu.
• Owners - This edit group allows editing by the owner or co-owner.
• QualityAnalysts - This edit group allows editing by the quality analyst or co-quality analyst.
• Reviewers - This edit group allows editing by the reviewer or co-reviewer.
• TeamMembers - This edit group allows editing by any team member except one invited as a guest.

At any time, you have the option to add or remove any of these edit groups from any card you are allowed to edit.

Add Card

The Add Card page allows you to add a card of type epic, feature, story, enhancement, defect, task, bug, test or transient to the Kanban board.

Should you enter a fair amount of text into one of a number of textarea input fields, a text-to-speech facility is available to allow you to listen to your text prior to submission.

Update Card

The Update Card page allows you to edit any existing card regardless of its type.

Should you enter a fair amount of text into one of a number of textarea input fields, a text-to-speech facility is available to allow you to listen to your text prior to submission.

Delete Card

The Delete Card page is reached whenever you select an individual card for deletion by clicking on its Delete menu option.

You will only be able to perform this action if the project’s ‘Allow Card Deletions’ setting has been enabled (disabled by default

Please note that the deletion of a parent card will cause all its children to be deleted at the same time.

Priorities and Severities

Kanbanara supports both priority and severity, each to four levels, thus giving one of sixteen levels of urgency and importance to an individual card ranging from critical-critical, through high and medium, down to low-low.

The most important cards in any state, those with critical or high priority, are automatically shown towards the top of the kanban board. Within each block grouping cards together of the same priority, such cards are additionally sorted by severity with the critical and high ones again towards the top.
Priorities

A card will be assigned one of four priorities - Critical, High, Medium or Low - at any given time, the default being Medium.

The most important cards in any state, those with critical or high priority, are automatically shown towards the top of the kanban board. Within each block grouping cards together of the same priority, such cards are additionally sorted by severity with the critical and high ones again towards the top.

Higher priority cards are shown towards the top of each state column.

This is not strictly true for the Backlog column, where cards may be displayed in the order they have been arranged by via the Backlog Pyramid.

Coupled with the assignment of a severity, this allows you to sort your cards into one of sixteen priority-severity pairs.

Severities

A card will be assigned one of four severities - Critical, High, Medium or Low - at any given time, the default being Medium.

The most important cards in any state, those with critical or high priority, are automatically shown towards the top of the kanban board. Within each block grouping cards together of the same priority, such cards are additionally sorted by severity with the critical and high ones again towards the top.

This is not strictly true for the Backlog column, where cards may be displayed in the order they have been arranged by via the Backlog Pyramid.

Coupled with the assignment of a priority, this allows you to sort your cards into one of sixteen priority-severity pairs.

Hierarchy

Such cards can be chained together with a simple parent-child relationship. Although a parent can have many children, a child can have only one parent.

Kanbanara posseses an ‘Isolate? facility to show just those cards hierarchically chained together.

Classes Of Service

A class of service may be allocated to a card.

Blocking a Card

A card can be blocked by a team member explicitly setting it as such. To such a block can be additionally added a date upon which the card will be automatically unblocked. A card can also be automatically blocked by its children if the parent and children get out of step as regards their states.

An individual card can be blocked in one of several ways:

• Explicitly blocked by one or more of its children.
• Automatically blocked if the states of the parent and any one of its children are in conflict.
• Explicitly blocked until manually unblocked.
• Explicitly blocked until a set date when it will be automatically unblocked.
• Blocked due to its state being ahead in the workflow than that of one or more of its prerequisites. The prerequisites (formerly ‘after’) attribute is the equivalent of a ‘Blocked By’ attribute which Kanbanara does not possess.
• Blocked due to its state being ahead in the workflow than that of one or more of its facilitators. A facilitator is set in the facilitates attribute (formerly ‘before’) of another card.

Next Action and Deadline

Next action or deadline dates can be individually assigned to a card. The Today kanban board is particularly useful in isolating those cards requiring your attention today (or indeed yesterday). Such cards can also be displayed per day on the Diary page.

Date for next action can be individually set per card. Visual notification/warning will be given when date is approaching or has passed. Such cards can be viewed on mass on the Today kanban board.

Due date for completion (deadline) can be individually set per card. Visual notification/warning will be given when date is approaching or has passed. Such cards can be viewed on mass on the Deadline kanban board.

Attachments

A file may be uploaded and attached to an individual card.

Inline Editing

The card view page allows certain attributes of a card to be edited inline.

Ghost Cards

At the bottom of each column on your kanban board is a section to hold ghost cards. Such ghost cards fall into one of two categories - either they are your own ghost cards having materialised to others whilst in their review/QA period or they are the ghost cards of others which only materialise to you during their review/QA period. For example, should you as a reviewer be assigned to a card many columns prior to reaching a review column, it will appear to you as a ghost card. Such appearance indicates to you that you have been assigned as the card?s reviewer but there is absolutely nothing for you to do until it reaches a review column when it will instantly materialise. You can think of ghost cards as residing in an undercurrent - cards you need to see but are not directly responsible for.

Routine Card Manager

Should you have a task that you do, say, every week, once a month or twice a year, Kanbanara’s routine card manager may prove of assistance as it allows the creation of routine cards to be automated. Should the automatic creation of a routine card cause you to get overwhelmed, it can be manually suspended for as long as you need in order to catch up.

Block

Parent card is automatically blocked by one or more of its children if their states have got out of step.

A card can be blocked by a team member explicitly setting it as such. To such a block can be additionally added a date upon which the card will be automatically unblocked. A card can also be automatically blocked by its children if the parent and children get out of step as regards their states.

Time and Cost

Estimated/actual time fully implemented.

Estimated/actual cost fully implemented.

Categories

Allows one or more user-defined categories to be assigned to a card. All cards of one or more categories can be shown on mass on the kanban board via the global filter?s Categories field.

CRM Case and Escalation

To each card can be assigned a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) case number and/or escalation.

Stuck

Ability to flag up that you are stuck on a particular card. Such card will then appear on others? kanban board prompting them to come to your aid.

Should a team member get absolutely stuck with a particular card, a stuck setting can be enabled by entering text describing how they are stuck and what assistance they require, whereupon such a card will appear on everyone else?s kanban board in the same project thus allowing help from a colleague in the shortest possible time.

Emotions

An emotion can be assigned to a card allowing a Project Manager to view all such emotions on the Emotions kanban board thereby getting a feel for the moral within his/her team.

External Reference

External reference and/or hyperlinks can be individually assigned to a card. Such references can be viewed on mass on the ExtRef Kanban board - Especially useful if selecting Service Support person as team member in the global filter.

Service Level Agreement

TO BE COMPLETED

Notes And Statuses

A card's previous notes and statuses are not retained, simply revised over time.

Hidden Cards

Should you have too many cards on your kanban board, Kanbanara allows you to hide them for up to six days into the future. Just set the HiddenUntil attribute and the card will disappear until the allotted time.

Backdrops

You can add a graphic file (.jpg, .gif or .png) as a backdrop to any card you desire. Backdrop files fall into two categories, generic/global, which can be utilised by all projects, and project-specific, which are only available to the current project.

Awards

Selecting from the list of awards specified by the project manager, one may be assigned to a particular card, which upon completion can be awarded to those involved.

Resolution

When a card reaches the closed state, one of the following resolutions can be separately assigned:

• Abandoned
• Cannot Reproduce
• Duplicate
• Fixed
• Incomplete
• Invalid
• Redundant
• Won’t fix
• Works As Designed

Closing Off A Release

Has no concept of closing off a release.

Closure and Resolution

Resolution (Released, Abandoned, etc.) for a Closed card can be separately assigned.