Have you ever experienced that dull task breakdown session, where you started with a couple of concepts (lets say street and phone and country) and ended up with a list of three or four tasks that somehow re-occured several times?
In this case perhaps:
- modify database schema to accommodate street
- modify ui to display street
- modify validators to validate street
- modify database schema to accommodate phone
- modify ui to display phone
- modify validators to validate phone
- modify database schema to accommodate country
- modify ui to display country
- modify validators to validate country
In these cases it might help to think differently about your work – perhaps those repeating categories are in faction stations that each of the concepts to be implemented have to go through.
Some people would model this as three different stations
- Database
- UI
- Validation
If you put them on the board as separate columns each item could be reduced to it's concepts core and just ‘flow’ through the system.
| Database | UI | Validation | done |
|---|---|---|---|
| street | |||
| phone | |||
| country |
So, perhaps it’s time to rethink task boards, put in some of the ideas from lean and kanban and add a couple of columns.
(of course not with the exact names from above ;-)
Disclaimer:
And no I don't recommend building db-, ui-, and logic-silos. But if you have them, be honest and acknowledge the fact. Change it afterwards. Start with what you do now as they say in Kanban.
till next time
Michael Mahlberg
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