{"id":11474,"date":"2014-10-06T14:57:57","date_gmt":"2014-10-06T19:57:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/?p=11474"},"modified":"2019-11-22T14:59:49","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T20:59:49","slug":"serenity-now-achieving-simplicity-in-a-busy-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/serenity-now-achieving-simplicity-in-a-busy-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Serenity now \u2013 achieving simplicity in a busy world"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you remember what tv character George Costanza\u2019s father occasionally used to scream when things got heated in a hugely famous \u201990s sitcom? Even if you literally haven\u2019t done the same, I bet you have felt like screaming \u201cserenity now!\u201d more than once. Ask yourself what\u2019s your schedule like this week, and start to do something about it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Plenty of actions to get through on your project and not quite sure how you\u2019ll manage it? There\u2019s no denying that projects are becoming more complex \u2013 with the workload creeping up and resources either remaining stagnant or shrinking \u2013 you\u2019re not alone if you sometimes find yourself struggling to manage.<\/p>\n

In today\u2019s complex business world, project teams can often feel bombarded with information from hundreds of sources at once. Not to mention\u00a0\"project-chaos-dude\"<\/a>the masses of emails going back and forth about any one project at a time. The result is information overload, and pretty\u00a0much everyone will have experienced it at some point in their job. It\u2019s not beneficial and can leave teams confused, as well as result in missed deadlines and inefficient use of resources.<\/p>\n

Finding clarity<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite the worries over the complexity of projects, there is an old approach which can help. It\u2019s nothing new as it\u2019s actually a 60-year-old method that dates back to post-war Japan. The Kanban, which is Japanese for \u2018card wall\u2019, is an approach used by the country in the late 1940s to revive the industry through production efficiency.<\/p>\n

The system features a board on which cards can be placed in different columns to represent workflows of projects. As the tasks progress, the cards move through the columns until they are complete. Think of it like a traffic light system, where the simplest boards have three columns:<\/p>\n