Kanban Board as personal productivity tool?

Software
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Hi everyone!

I was thinking about building a macOS app, heavily based Kanban Board and I would like to ask You what do You think about ideas below:

  • instead of horizontally spawned sections they would be placed vertically (cards would be placed horizontally in section),
  • integration with services like Asana/Trello/Jira to import/export boards,
  • more relaxed or Mac native (a little more static, simpler) interface?
  • search/filtering features.

Is it what would be usable? I am aiming to fill a gap of personal productivity tools and this app could be it. Especially I am really curious what do You think about idea of different layout than usually You can see in most popular software.

Of course please don’t take it as real expectation of seeing app like that in future, right now I am just gathering people’ opinions.

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You might be interested in this thread Scrivener vs DEVONThink as a Kanban Board?

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The Kanban board is conceptually a sequence of action from beginning (left) to end (right). It is also a depiction of accumulation of knowledge and tasks, which to me (and millions of others) looks better accumulated in a list. (There’s a reason there are no popular left-to-right task list apps!)

By making a vertical kanban you lose the ability to offer swimlanes (to break down tasks into groups), queues, WIP limits, queues, classes of service, etc.

If you want to make a very limited, personal kanban that only has something like 3-4 rows without those other features it could certainly be doable, and maybe a fun programming project, but I don’t see any advantages to any of the current kanban options that have substantial personal free tiers.

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Might want to check out Hyper Plan.

Already ploughed much of this ground.

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I thought about building it for freelancers that are managing software projects. I am not focusing on building a tool for teams (yet), as it will be based on files (like MindNode does) rather than keeping everything behind the cloud (like Trello does, cutting you from your data when you are unable to get the internet connection). These two are my main priorities for now, later I will strongly consider implementing features for teams.

I wanted to build this project since I hate electron and web apps. Trello is unbelievable unusable when I have no/very slow internet connection, also I don’t want a a load of features that are used mainly when you are working in team.

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I’ve only ever used Trello in a browser, never saw any Mac app, Electron or not, that did more than the browser.

I’m not sure how well a scrolling kanban would do. Is there any demand for it without an associated iOS app? (These days I don’t know a lot of people who are prepared to devote their info to an app whose data can’t be accessed or edited on smartphone or tablet.)

What seems to be happening now is a convergence of to-do app/services with kanban functionality: Todoist announced that later this year they’re introducing a Trello-like Card mode; ZenKit lets you switch between kanban, table, calendar, or list with the click of a button; Taskade now offers list, kanban, mindnap and database views with a click, etc etc.

For my own use I am on the cusp of outgrowing Trello and am looking for a product with swimlanes; the best online one with a free tier to try is Kanban Tool, which I’m going to investigate soon. Another option is Kanbanier, which is free in the Mac App Store but unlocks swimlanes among other things with a $14.99 IAP. (Though I’m unclear as to whether the iOS app’s IAP is also needed for sync.)

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