It all started in the 1940s when Taiichi Ohno, an industrial engineer, formulated the Kanban methodology as a simple planning system to improve efficiency at Toyota. Its key objective was to control and manage every stage of production and to optimize the workflow.
Kanban can be broken into the Japanese words “kan” and “ban” which translates to visual cards. Kanban is an agile methodology that solves problems through visual cues in the form of cards that deliver what the process needs and when it needs it by reducing idle time in the workflow, thus improving efficiency.
Kanban boards, though popularised by the software development and IT service desk space, are now used in nearly every industry. As Help Desk users, it is of great importance that teams maintain agility and accelerate service management initiatives. Whether they’re part of the development teams or support teams, kanban can help them hit metrics and KPIs while consistently bettering their results. The kanban view of tickets is one example of how HappyFox excels as an agile Help Desk. Software like HappyFox’s Help Desk, which optimizes ticketing, recognizes and leverages the speed of delivery that kanban offers. It takes the visual approach of the kanban board and cards and digitizes it so that the workflow can be seen by the entire team.
A New Perspective for your Tickets
HappyFox Help Desk provides 3 layouts that allow support teams to toggle between multiple view modes for ticket visualization and resolution.
- The Card view is the standard view. It facilitates the comfortable viewing of tickets and is meant for detailed action.
- The Compact view is a lite version that allows quick review and action on a ticket without even opening it.
- The Kanban view acts as the perfect layout for an agile workflow. It allows support teams to plan their work more efficiently by providing visibility into the distribution of incoming tickets across various boards.
A Fully Customizable Kanban View
Kanban is a popular methodology that drives efficiency at the service desk level. With implementing an agile Help Desk as its primary aim, HappyFox provides 4 Kanban boards based on ticket properties that are common metrics such as – Assignee, Status, Priority, and Due-date.
- Assignee Board: View how tickets are distributed across the support team. It helps you identify overburdened agents and to relocate work to other agents to optimize ticket assignment.
- Status Board: Examine tickets by their status and identify which stages of the support pipeline contribute to bottlenecks.
- Priority Board: With tickets arranged by priority, keep track of critical escalations and always be aware of where ticket weightage stands.
- Due-date Board: Easily uncover tickets that are pending for resolution and streamline your support strategy to reflect an agile methodology.
Using Kanban to Plan for an Agile Execution
From its origins in Toyota’s lean and just-in-time manufacturing attempts, kanban has come a long way with several new features. Just as how agile and scrum workflows have metrics in place that help it focus on short sprints, kanban also works on short cycle times that facilitate a speedy and high-quality resolution of tickets. It is important to note that kanban usage in an agile setup requires effective and constant communication amongst all stakeholders for better results.
- When teams are not able to share a physical space, digital kanban boards allow them to function asynchronously and maintain an efficient workflow while boosting their productivity. It is based on encouraging as little work in progress (WIP) as possible.
- Kanban increases transparency and accountability amongst the team members, helping them collaborate in real-time to optimize the whole value chain, rather than just their part. So, instead of handling support tickets individually, the entire team works together to complete tasks.
- In the customer support space where priorities of tasks are frequently changing, kanban helps provide rapid feedback loops. It maximizes customer satisfaction and also the delivery of value to the end-user by improving the speed and quality of the output.
- It encourages cross-functional working, speedy feedback, and continuous integration and deployment, which are all cornerstones of agile practice. This variation of project management encourages the whole team to resolve issues in record response times.
Good Planning, Even Better Execution
In the long run, using kanban addresses workflow issues reduces lead time and costs, and accommodates the changing demands of end-users, all while improving the quality of solutions. The HappyFox kanban view has no learning curve; it is as simple as clicking on a view switcher.
To learn more about how HappyFox Help Desk helps create agile workflows complete with automation, book a personalized demo with us.
