Process Improvement Facilitator-Lean Six Sigma Black Belt at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2021-09-22T22:23:00Z
Sep 22, 2021
In terms of my impression of the flexibility of the Board Layout Editor, overall, my experience is great. I don't know if I'm using it the right way, but there are some things that I would rather customize, and I can't seem to figure out how to customize. I'd like to be able to blow up individual tasks in a card because that's my thing. I like the idea, but there is more work they can do to allow some customization aspects within it. It may be my lack of knowledge, but I feel that at the level of tasks on a specific card, on a board, there are some barriers to customize the ways those tasks appear. I would advise looking at how they can make that a little more customizable in terms of breaking that little pass card down into sub-things. It is a card within a card, within a card, and so on. Why don't they have the full functionality of every layer? I feel like we run into a barrier where at the micro-level, it no longer behaves exactly like at the macro level. I guess it is like that Pink Floyd album cover with the mirrors. You've got to stop somewhere. It can't be an infinite repeat, and I get it, but I just think it would be useful to allow a little more flexibility there. They have a feature called Instant Coffee. It was in the beta phase. They released it from beta, and now, it is a legit thing. We were in the pilot here. I liked the idea of Instant Coffee, and I like how it is integrated, to some degree, with LeanKit, but I have two big rocks to throw at them on this. The first one is that Instant Coffee does not save your work very well in terms of saving it in formats that you can then go back and edit as Visio would. It leads to the next point, which is, we're not really clear on what they're trying to do with Instant Coffee. I feel that they're trying not to reinvent Visio, Miro, and other software programs out there that do mapping, visual diagrams, etc. Miro is fantastic in that regard. I gather they're not trying to reinvent Miro, but it sure would be nice if it had more aspects of Miro in it, such as being able to draw arrows and write on them on the top. The way I explain Instant Coffee is that I tell people that it is like the equivalent of Atari Pong. It is a binary Atari Pong type of program, and maybe that's what they're going for. What happens is that you have people like me who tend to be creative. I can work within limitations because I can just change my mindset, but not everyone can do that. I just think that their program might be unappealing to some people who see that it doesn't do what they think it should do. They could create some kinds of practice modules, test pilot modules, or check-ins after the initial training and score people. They could do some kind of follow-up if they wanted to.
Executive Support Team Leader at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2021-09-22T18:47:00Z
Sep 22, 2021
There's room for improvement with the Instant Coffee feature. There are other businesses that have been interested in leveraging a virtual whiteboard or sticky note capability and how Instant Coffee was developed has not met the mark.
Perfect Execution Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2021-09-22T10:18:00Z
Sep 22, 2021
We use the submit feedback button pretty often. I encourage the teams to use that if they see anything that could be improved. But we've been really happy with how fast LeanKit improves. The biggest improvement would be the API and data connections and making the data more accessible or quicker to access. One of our team members has brought up actual-time tracking on a card as a potential improvement. They had an interest in knowing how long a specific card had been worked on by a specific user or somebody that was assigned to that card. But there's not really a way for them to start and stop a time that they were actually working on it, except for if we created a different lane and they dragged it into the lane and then stopped using it in the lane. They requested that there'd be some sort of timer function on each one of the tasks.
Director, Solution Strategy & PMO at Verisk Analytics
User
2021-09-21T14:35:00Z
Sep 21, 2021
Our overall impression of Leankit has been very positive, however, our experience with the JIRA integration into our Leankit boards was much harder than we anticipated and that could be improved by simplifying it somehow. They could use some sort of drag and drop approach if possible. The requirements to create these integrations are very complex and time-consuming both on our end and the Planview/Tasktop end. Once the integration is set up, the user experience is great, however, the setup itself is difficult.
Manufacturing Manager, Capital COE at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2021-01-13T09:22:00Z
Jan 13, 2021
The integration with the Enterprise One product is probably an area for improvement. It's not really broken. It's just that it is such a handy tool and a great way to visually manage things. There is a very limited hookup/integration between Enterprise One, which is the master Planview tool, and LeanKit. While they are looking at this on their roadmap, it definitely needs to happen. There is a lot of opportunity there. Planview is buying companies. So, they get these tools, then it just takes some time to figure out the best way to integrate them with each other. That is probably one of the largest opportunities. I would also like it if they integrated it with being able to do a timeline, like a better schedule by using the tool.
Application Analyst at a non-profit with 51-200 employees
Real User
2020-09-21T06:33:00Z
Sep 21, 2020
The ability to report on customizable fields and third-party extensions needs improvement. I'd like to see more of those being able to be used. I don't know how that works for Planview, but just getting a little bit more added there would be nice.
Applications Analyst at University of Kansas Medical Center
Real User
2020-09-16T10:05:00Z
Sep 16, 2020
Being able to determine what the Card Size feature is for, and have it be just one, standard thing instead of it being open to interpretation, would help. I have also noticed that some people want to be able to make recurring cards. If they have tasks that they do over and over again, they would like to be able to automatically duplicate cards or have them recur. Also, being able to track actual time on cards or sprints, instead of using just the planned start and stop date, would also be useful. I would like to see something like JIRA has with actual sprint starts and stops.
I do not know what it can do in the area of scrum. Maybe it has that functionality. I have never tried to set it up. You think of LeanKit from the perspective of Kanban. I don't know if there is a template for scrum, a scaled agile framework, or any of those scaling frameworks.
Planview AgilePlace is a cloud-based solution designed to provide businesses with a continuous flow of work to help teams accelerate delivery times by visualizing their work with enterprise Kanban boards and lean metrics. Planview offers project managers the visibility, resource management, and real-time analytics necessary to help their teams reduce bottlenecks and dependencies and work more effectively. By using Kanban boards, teams are able to visually track and manage the flow of their...
In terms of my impression of the flexibility of the Board Layout Editor, overall, my experience is great. I don't know if I'm using it the right way, but there are some things that I would rather customize, and I can't seem to figure out how to customize. I'd like to be able to blow up individual tasks in a card because that's my thing. I like the idea, but there is more work they can do to allow some customization aspects within it. It may be my lack of knowledge, but I feel that at the level of tasks on a specific card, on a board, there are some barriers to customize the ways those tasks appear. I would advise looking at how they can make that a little more customizable in terms of breaking that little pass card down into sub-things. It is a card within a card, within a card, and so on. Why don't they have the full functionality of every layer? I feel like we run into a barrier where at the micro-level, it no longer behaves exactly like at the macro level. I guess it is like that Pink Floyd album cover with the mirrors. You've got to stop somewhere. It can't be an infinite repeat, and I get it, but I just think it would be useful to allow a little more flexibility there. They have a feature called Instant Coffee. It was in the beta phase. They released it from beta, and now, it is a legit thing. We were in the pilot here. I liked the idea of Instant Coffee, and I like how it is integrated, to some degree, with LeanKit, but I have two big rocks to throw at them on this. The first one is that Instant Coffee does not save your work very well in terms of saving it in formats that you can then go back and edit as Visio would. It leads to the next point, which is, we're not really clear on what they're trying to do with Instant Coffee. I feel that they're trying not to reinvent Visio, Miro, and other software programs out there that do mapping, visual diagrams, etc. Miro is fantastic in that regard. I gather they're not trying to reinvent Miro, but it sure would be nice if it had more aspects of Miro in it, such as being able to draw arrows and write on them on the top. The way I explain Instant Coffee is that I tell people that it is like the equivalent of Atari Pong. It is a binary Atari Pong type of program, and maybe that's what they're going for. What happens is that you have people like me who tend to be creative. I can work within limitations because I can just change my mindset, but not everyone can do that. I just think that their program might be unappealing to some people who see that it doesn't do what they think it should do. They could create some kinds of practice modules, test pilot modules, or check-ins after the initial training and score people. They could do some kind of follow-up if they wanted to.
There's room for improvement with the Instant Coffee feature. There are other businesses that have been interested in leveraging a virtual whiteboard or sticky note capability and how Instant Coffee was developed has not met the mark.
We use the submit feedback button pretty often. I encourage the teams to use that if they see anything that could be improved. But we've been really happy with how fast LeanKit improves. The biggest improvement would be the API and data connections and making the data more accessible or quicker to access. One of our team members has brought up actual-time tracking on a card as a potential improvement. They had an interest in knowing how long a specific card had been worked on by a specific user or somebody that was assigned to that card. But there's not really a way for them to start and stop a time that they were actually working on it, except for if we created a different lane and they dragged it into the lane and then stopped using it in the lane. They requested that there'd be some sort of timer function on each one of the tasks.
Our overall impression of Leankit has been very positive, however, our experience with the JIRA integration into our Leankit boards was much harder than we anticipated and that could be improved by simplifying it somehow. They could use some sort of drag and drop approach if possible. The requirements to create these integrations are very complex and time-consuming both on our end and the Planview/Tasktop end. Once the integration is set up, the user experience is great, however, the setup itself is difficult.
The integration with the Enterprise One product is probably an area for improvement. It's not really broken. It's just that it is such a handy tool and a great way to visually manage things. There is a very limited hookup/integration between Enterprise One, which is the master Planview tool, and LeanKit. While they are looking at this on their roadmap, it definitely needs to happen. There is a lot of opportunity there. Planview is buying companies. So, they get these tools, then it just takes some time to figure out the best way to integrate them with each other. That is probably one of the largest opportunities. I would also like it if they integrated it with being able to do a timeline, like a better schedule by using the tool.
The ability to report on customizable fields and third-party extensions needs improvement. I'd like to see more of those being able to be used. I don't know how that works for Planview, but just getting a little bit more added there would be nice.
Being able to determine what the Card Size feature is for, and have it be just one, standard thing instead of it being open to interpretation, would help. I have also noticed that some people want to be able to make recurring cards. If they have tasks that they do over and over again, they would like to be able to automatically duplicate cards or have them recur. Also, being able to track actual time on cards or sprints, instead of using just the planned start and stop date, would also be useful. I would like to see something like JIRA has with actual sprint starts and stops.
I do not know what it can do in the area of scrum. Maybe it has that functionality. I have never tried to set it up. You think of LeanKit from the perspective of Kanban. I don't know if there is a template for scrum, a scaled agile framework, or any of those scaling frameworks.