Kanban boards have become an essential tool for agile project management, helping teams visualize their work, manage tasks, and improve collaboration. In this article, we will explore how Kanban boards can be integrated into a meeting minutes app, enhancing the way teams plan, execute, and track their meetings and agenda items.

A Brief History of Kanban Boards

Kanban boards were initially developed in the manufacturing industry as a way to manage work in progress and streamline production processes. Over time, the concept has been adapted for various industries and has become a popular tool for agile project management. The core idea behind Kanban boards is to help teams plan work for a specific time frame (sprint) and provide visibility into what each team member is working on.

Meeting Minutes and Kanban Boards: A Perfect Match

Meeting minutes are essential for documenting discussions, decisions, and action items during a meeting. In the context of a Kanban board, each meeting minute item is called an agenda item. These agenda items can belong to a meeting series, which can be referred to as a sprint in the Kanban world.

Once a meeting is completed, it should be marked as completed, and the corresponding sprint on the Kanban board should also be treated as completed. The meeting minutes app can automatically copy all incomplete agenda items from the previous meeting series into the new meeting, along with their Kanban status columns.

Agenda items on the Kanban board have an additional status column, which holds the value of the Kanban column meaning. This allows agenda item attributes to be reused as Kanban items, streamlining the process and ensuring consistency across the board.

Setting Up and Customizing Kanban Boards

When navigating to the Kanban board in the meeting minutes app, users will initially see an empty board with no default columns. However, there will be a button to set up default columns, such as To Do, Doing, and Done. Users can then rename these columns as needed and add additional ones.

Once the default columns are set up, all agenda items will be moved into the To Do column. When a Kanban item is dragged to the Done column, it marks the corresponding agenda item as completed.

Filtering and Backlog Functionality

Kanban boards in the meeting minutes app also feature filtering functionality, allowing users to filter items based on search criteria or responsible person. On the left side of the Kanban board, users will find two tabs: one for workflows and another for the backlog.

The backlog tab shows all items that do not belong to any Kanban column. If there are multiple meeting series, the backlog will be visible across all of them and available for use. The typical use case for the backlog is to add ideas or tasks that may be picked up by any team member in a later sprint.

Checklists and Workflow Integration

Each Kanban item can have a checklist, where users can create lists to track progress. For now, these checklists are only available on the Kanban board and not within the agenda items in a meeting.

Additionally, each Kanban item may have several workflow items. When clicked, these items will load the workflow component used in the workflows app, showing the details of the workflow and allowing for seamless integration between the two tools.

Conclusion

Integrating Kanban boards into a meeting minutes app provides a powerful way for teams to plan, manage, and track their meetings and agenda items. By combining the strengths of both tools, teams can improve collaboration, streamline processes, and ultimately achieve better results in their projects.