I’m a big fan of Kanban board. I prefer it over TODO list for all my professional and personal work. It’s clear to understand, doesn’t require extensive management process and most important offers great visibility of work.
I’m not going to focus on Kanban itself. If you want to read more about it I would refer you to few external links for more info:
- http://www.kanbanblog.com/explained/
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_board
- http://guide.agilealliance.org/guide/kanban.html
What I would like to focus on is how to do a cheap Electronic Board on Apple Mac without any additional software installed.
What you need?
If you got Mac you don’t really need anything more. I’m running OS X 10.8.3.
To make the Kanban board I used application shipped with OS X called Stickies and a custom made desktop backgrounds.
How to do it?
First of all, I’ve created a new Desktop using Mission Control and setup Desktop Background to my Custom “Kanban Board like” wallpaper.
I’ve prepared two backgrounds, dark and bright, which you are more than welcome to use for free.
My empty board is ready. All I need to do now is to add some Stickies onto it.
Voila. You can modify color of a sticky and make it transparent. I’m using colors to distinguish between different types of tasks. Stickies on the top are the one with top priority.
Once your Done column is full you can archive your Stickie by saving it and removing from the board.
Simple as that I hope you’ll find it helpful and easy to use. Greg
Greg Gigon's wEbLOG 
Inspired at a conference to explore kaizen, kanban, lean etc and have been looking at ideas for implementing a personal and a work team kanban board. Found this page and let out a Jerry Espensen*-like squeal of delight! Definitely on of those ‘Now why didn’t I think of that’ moments – thanks for the inspiration.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Boston_Legal_characters
Hi, nice one. I tried this, but it seems (on my maverick MBA at least) that stickies always reappear on the primary display/desktop instead off on the second one I created just for this purpose. Any ideas?
Cheers
Phil
Hm .. not sure.
I just go to the Desktop number X and open the Stickies and all are there. I do have Maverick as well on MBP.
You can always give the other App I’ve done a try 🙂
https://greggigon.com/2014/01/23/do-less-to-do-more-my-personal-kanban-in-the-clouds/
G
Funny. I had it all nicely setup on my second Desktop and had to reboot, because of virtualbox. On the next startup it was all on the primary desktop. For now I made the primary my kanban-boad, but it’s not ideal.
I read about your app and it seems really nice, but I was so fond about doing it without any special software and without cloud or login etc.
I’ll still have a further look at it, as it looks really fancy.
Try to Exit stickied (Cmd+Q) switch screen and open on the one with Kanban background.
The app I done doesn’t require you to use cloud. It will use local browser storage to store the content. Cloud functionality is only the option 🙂
Yes, that did it. Thx. I’ll try you app tomorrow. It’s getting late here in Germany 😉 I’ll give you my feedback asaic. But maybe you could explain how the data is saved in the google-cloud. It would be nice to have the same board for my mba and my iPad. But it must be a simple no fuss solution, everything else distracts me too much 😉
This is really cool! I dropped in a couple of scripts to pop new sticky notes open with a colour coding for priority and now I can pop open a new task from my shell!
Scripts are: https://gist.github.com/evansde77/312f85478799f80af501
Thanks!
D.
I have used your idea but I have created the whole thing out of “Stickeys” including the headings, dividing lines etc., and it works beautifully. If you have shut the computer down it is all saved within “Stickeys and you can reopen the complete kanban board again on startup by clicking “Stickeys” on to whichever desktop screen you wish. There is no provision for attachments in this reply box so I will email you an image of the completed Kanban Screen
Wow, why didn’t I think of that! Thank you so much Greg
You are awesome! Thanks so much Greg!