This article describes how you can use Evernote to setup a simple, yet easy to use Kanban “system” to manage your projects, workflows and tasks using (shared) notebooks, tags and notes. For optimal use at least one premium subscriber evernote account is needed.
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Evernote was not intended to be used for this, so there are some drawbacks of course. The most important drawback is that you will be missing the typical visual representation of a Kanban board, with its vertical lanes that represent a state in the workflow.
What is Kanban?
Kanban, very simply put, is a way to manage and optimize workflow. It was originally invented by Toyota for their manufacturing, but nowadays it is also applied to software development and other kinds processes such as household tasks.
For more details, just google on Kanban or use Wikipedia as a starting point to learn more about it. I strongly you suggest you do some initial reading on this, so that you can easily understand the rest of the article and see the benefit of a setup using Evernote.
Minimalistic setup in Evernote
The most minimalistic setup is just for one person. This can be a free account, but in that case the normal limitations apply. With a free account you can only attach PDF’s and images to a note. With a premium subscriber account you can also attach Word document and basically any other type of attachment. PDF’s will be searchable and even text in images is searchable.
What do you need?
You need the following:
- an evernote account (free or premium)
- a single (synchronized) notebook
- tags to represent stages in the workflow, such as for example:
- todo
- doing
- done
- notes representing tasks (these are the Kanban cards)
The setup described will work with any modern browser. You can also use any of the evernote desktop clients (Mac/Windows) or one of the mobile apps (iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone).
Note that a synchronized notebook is not the same as a shared notebook. A synchronized notebook created in one of the desktops clients syncs with your online evernote account. With the desktop client you can also create local notebooks however. These notebooks are not synced with your online evernote account and will not be accessible with a browser or one of the mobile apps.
How does it work?
The notebook you create basically represents the Kanban board, but without the same visual representation of it. It is the placeholder for your notes that represent the Kanban cards, where each note/card represents a task or any kind of item that you want it to represent, as long as it fits within the Kanban way of working.
Once you created the notebook, you can start adding notes that represent your tasks, such as:
- buy bread
- bring out the trash
- clean garage
Each of these notes will be assigned one or more tags. In the example tags given above, a task can only have one tag, because the states of the workflow are mutually exclusive.
Initially, assuming you aren’t doing any of those tasks yet, all these notes will be tagged with todo. When you then decide to take up a task, you change the note, remove the todo tag and assign it the doing tag. And when you’re done, well, you remove the doing tag and assign it the done flag. After a while, you can decide to remove the notes that have the done tag as you may not want to keep those forever.
Based on your tags, you can easily see in which state a particular note is and when it may be ready to be pulled into the next state of your workflow.
That’s it!
A more advanced setup: other people in the game
Setting up a Kanban approach just for you is nice, but could be a bit of overkill. It is very useful however when more people come into play. In case of the household related tasks given earlier, it might be that other people in your household/family add new tasks or do them. So how would you do that?
One “shared” account
The most simple setup here is by using just one evernote account that is shared by the other people in your household. They all know the account user name and password. You just create an extra set of tags representing the names of your household/family members, for example:
- John
- Mary
- Junior
When you create a new task note, you assign it both the todo and one of the name tags if you already know upfront who is supposed to do it. But you can also leave it “blank”, i.e. you don’t assign a name tag to it, meaning that anyone can do it. In that case, if someone picks it up to do it, he/she would remove the todo tag and assign it the doing tag and his/her name tag, for example John.
Sounds easy, doesn’t it?
However, there are situations where you don’t want the other people to use your account. You may have other notebooks in your account that you don’t want other people peeking into, not even when they are your family members. Even if there is nothing confidential, there is always the risk that another member deletes notes or changes them just for fun (you don’t here me laughing however).
But there is an alternative to that, just read on…
One premium subscriber account and multiple other accounts
In this case each person involved needs his/her own evernote account, but one of them needs to be a premium subscriber. The reason for this is that only a premium subscriber account can share a notebook with individuals that are able to create, modify or delete notes in that shared notebook. A free account can only share a notebook for viewing, which is not what you want in this case.
So how does this work?
The premium subscriber account needs to create a notebook as normal and then share it with individuals. Basic information on how to share a notebook from the desktop client of Evernote can be found here.
Evernote For Project Management
When you want to share a notebook from the desktop client, right click on it and choose to share it. You will be presented with the following screen (or something similar):
Now choose Share with individuals and enter the email addresses of the persons you want to share the notebook with.
Don’t forget to check the Modify this notebook setting and Require log in to Evernote setting:
The invited people will receive an email with a link to the shared notebook, which they can either access online with a browser or integrate within the desktop client. Note that if you want to access this shared notebook with one of the mobile apps that you need to integrate it first in the desktop and sync, otherwise it won’t show up. Further details are left up to the reader to find out.
That’s all!
Additional thoughts
The above more advanced setup can of course be further extended. If you are working within a software development team, you could think of the following:
- Using multiple shared notebooks to represent different teams
- Using multiple shared notebooks to represent different projects (not recommended, see next item)
- Using tags to identify a project
- Using especially tagged notes to describe the projects, tagged with charter
- Using tags for bug, incident, release, feature, story etc. (yes, the hint to Scrum is intentional ;–))
- Adding comments in the body of a note to describe whatever you like
- Attach files to notes with additional information
- Create saved searches to quickly filter on specific tags
- Create “template” notes for specific entries that are often needed, pre-tagged
Shortcomings
The above setup still has a lot of shortcomings:
- You don’t get a nice visual representation of the Kanban board
- It’s a manual process to set the tags (and ownership of a task)
- In fact it is all manual…
- No other advanced features that some of the online tools have to offer
Another shortcoming is that there are a lot of companies that have their firewall block access to Evernote (and other cloud-based storage services such as Dropbox).
Advanced alternatives
If you need something more advanced, take a look at the following online services:
Or look at this article which lists 15 tools for Kanban.
This is the second part of the sequel on my way of using Evernote. The first one was about the creation of notes and the third will be about notebooks and tags and my overall approach for organising the content inside Evernote. In this part, I’ll describe how I use Evernote for task management.
My tool of choice for task management had been Trello. It still is for collaborative work on projects and for strategic flows, but I “migrated” my personal task management entirely to Evernote.
How? I simply use the way reminders appear on top of all notes with the ability to rearrange them by dragging, as Kanban board. For most projects and themes I do it within a single notebook for the whole board. For some projects, I use a stack of notebooks. Let’s call them “small Kanban” and “big Kanban” respectively.
When I decide to use small Kanban in a notebook, I create a few reminders to clearly separate the lists in which work items are sorted depending on their state. They are typically titled “TO DO”, “DOING” and “DONE” like that:
Sometimes I add “ISSUES” or “BLOCKED”, as well as “REFERENCE”. I put in the latter some frequently used notes. This list serves me as sort of local shortcuts, while for the global ones I use the common shortcut feature of Evernote.
When a new task comes to the project notebook, for example from a forwarded email, it appears always on top. This way I treat the zone above “TO DO” as “BACKLOG”. Then I do the sorting by dragging what I plan next under “TO DO”. The rest of the items on top – if they are tasks – just stay there waiting to be planned. If they are issues or some reference, they go to their list where, as with tasks, their order would indicate priority or importance.
To be properly called “Kanban” such a board should help not only in visualising the workflow but also in keeping the work-in-progress within predefined limits. I’m not strict about that, yet I’m doing it in a way. The control is, when I put “TO DO” on top of my screen, I should see all tasks down to the last one in “DOING” without scrolling.
Evernote Gtd
When I don’t need to see an item in “DONE” anymore, I use Evernote’s “Mark reminder as Done” to make it disappear from the board.
And that’s all I do in small Kanban boards.
Kanbanote
Big Kanban boards in my Evernote are within stacks of notebooks. Each notebook in the stack contains a different set of notes, and for those with reminders, the membership is on the basis of workflow state. The reminders of the main project notebook are treated as “NEW” and “TO DO”. As it is important that this panel appears on top, I need sometimes to add a prefix to the notebook name. Yet, I try to keep it short and simple to minimise the effort when indicating destination in an email subject. In this sense, I wouldn’t use a name such as the one in the example below but I hope it does the job to demonstrate how the stack of notebook reminders serves as Kanban board.
Unlike in small boards, I keep the backlog – which is again a separate notebook – clearly indicated as such and at the bottom. That might look strange as the rest of the flow goes top down. However, for bigger projects, the backlog is also bigger and it is used less often than “TO DO” and “DOING” lists. There is another reason as well. In most cases, not one but many tasks move from “BACKLOG” to “TO DO”. It is not efficient to do note by note dragging, which otherwise is the main feature making this practice possible. What I do instead is, I select the notes and click on “Move to notebook”.
Then I select the destination notebook (…Project “A”) which serves as “TO DO” list. To clarify for those used to pure Kanban boards, keeping a backlog comes from the Scrum practice, or at least this is from where I know it. When it is decided to do something, it goes to the backlog. When it is decided to do it in the next iteration, then it is in “TO DO”. Even without timeboxing, I find the difference between [to do sometime] and [to do next] very useful, that’s why the first state is indicated by the work item belonging to the BACKLOG ( which is the area above “TO DO” for the small Kanban and the “BACKLOG” notebook for the big) and to TO DO (which section “TO DO” for the small Kanban and the main project notebook for the big).
And that’s it.
Kanban Onenote
I’ve been doing this for four years now and I find it very useful. It’s low-maintenance and it improves productivity. There are additional benefits from the fact that tasks live in the same place as all other notes. There are a few simple capabilities which would make Evernote even better for task management in general, and for Kanban boards in particular. They will be one of the topics of the final part.
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Kanban Notebook
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