{"id":8140,"date":"2021-10-13T21:32:06","date_gmt":"2021-10-13T21:32:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/?p=8140"},"modified":"2021-10-13T21:32:11","modified_gmt":"2021-10-13T21:32:11","slug":"using-a-leankit-board-to-manage-risks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/2021\/10\/13\/using-a-leankit-board-to-manage-risks\/","title":{"rendered":"Using a LeanKit board to manage risks"},"content":{"rendered":"
LeanKit<\/a> is my favourite productivity tool. Our team has been using it for the past couple years to manage our work across a series of Kanban boards. It is super easy to use, and offers a massive amount of flexibility compared to the implementation of Kanban boards in Jira<\/a>, Trello<\/a> or Microsoft Planner<\/a>. You can configure both vertical and<\/em> horizontal swimlanes, instead of just the vertical columns of tasks that the other tools offer. It is easy to represent your team\u2019s workflow as it feels like the tool is working with you instead of against you.<\/p>\n

Recently we have also started to use LeanKit to manage our department\u2019s risks. At our company, we have an Operational Risk framework used across the organisation that looks like this:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The first job is to reproduce this layout in LeanKit so that everyone can relate the board back to the model. The board editor makes this super easy.<\/p>\n

Here the typical Kanban setup of \u2018to do\u2019, \u2018doing\u2019 and \u2018done\u2019 is represented by the \u2018New Risks\u2019, \u2018Current (Residual) Risk \u2014 After Mitigation\u2019 and \u2018Closed \u2014 Ready To Archive\u2019 lanes respectively:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The man section is then broken down into rows for \u2018likelihood\u2019, with \u2018severity\u2019 columns in each row. The coloured circles in each of the box titles are emojis that are added when editing the title of each box (on Windows use the Windows key plus \u2018.\u2019 to bring up the emoji picker<\/a>, and on a Mac press \u2018fn\u2019 or use the Edit > Emoji & Symbols<\/em> dropdown in the menu bar<\/a>). We also have a \u2018Themes\u2019 section at the top of this lane \u2014 more on this later.<\/p>\n

In the \u2018New Risks\u2019 column we have a space for a template as well as a \u2018For review\u2019 section which has been allocated as the drop lane. By default, new risks will go here when we think of them; we then periodically review them as a team and drag them to the appropriate place on the board.<\/p>\n

We then need to configure the board. The Board Settings<\/em> tab can be used to set a title, description, custom URL and specify who gets access:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In this example, I\u2019m not yet ready to let anyone else use it so I have set the default security to \u2018No Access\u2019:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In the Card Types<\/em> section we define three types of card. The main one is \u2018Risk\u2019 but we also create \u2018Theme\u2019 to group our risks together. We also left \u2018Subtask\u2019 as one of the defaults in case someone wants to use the on-card mini-Kanban board to manage the tasks relating to an individual risk. We pick some colours we like, and delete all of the other default types of card:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We also set up a Custom icon<\/em> so that we can see at a glance which of our risks are mitigated\/accepted, those that we are working on and those where we need to give them attention.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We ensure that every card has one of these custom icons when we create it. During a review we can then filter the board so that, for example, only the red-starred cards appear.<\/p>\n

Next we create the template card. First, we set the Card Header<\/em> to allow custom header text. With templates, I like to leave the board user with instructions such as \u2018Copy me!\u2019:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We then create the template card itself. This goes some way to ensuring that all of the new risks get created in a similar way, with similar information. This card will be put into the \u2018Template\u2019 section of the board:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In order to distinguish one risk from another, and report them to wherever they need to go, we want each risk to have a unique identifier. We can now go back to the Card Header<\/em> in the board\u2019s settings and select \u2018Auto-incremented Number\u2019 with a header prefix of \u2018Risk \u2018. This means that new cards added to the board will be called \u2018Risk 1\u2019, \u2018Risk 2\u2019, \u2018Risk 3\u2019 etc.:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The \u2018Risk \u2018 prefix does have the effect of changing the name of the template card, but this isn\u2019t too confusing:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We can now start adding risks to the board, and linking them to themes as shown below:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Having a visual representation of our risks in this way is so much better than the usual spreadsheet with one risk per row. It\u2019s allowed us to incorporate risk management much more into our day-to-day work. We can assign owners to each risk, and use all of the rich features of LeanKit such as adding comments, due dates etc.<\/p>\n

If we decide a risk needs to be reclassified in terms of its likelihood or severity, we simply drag the card to the new location on the board. The card itself will keep a history of its journey in its audit log. If we absolutely have to submit our risks in a spreadsheet somewhere, we can export the board contents as a CSV file and format it in Excel.<\/p>\n

The best thing about managing the risks in this way is that we can link any mitigation work directly to the risks themselves. Where we agree a follow-up action, we create a task cards on the appropriate team Kanban boards and then link each of those cards to the risk \u2014 the risk card becomes the parent card of the task. In this way, we can see at a glance all of our risks and track the work as it gets completed across the organisation.<\/p><\/div>\n

LeanKit is my favourite productivity tool. Our team has been using it for the past couple years to manage our work across a series of Kanban boards. It is super easy to use, and offers a massive amount of flexibility compared to the implementation of Kanban boards in Jira, Trello or Microsoft Planner. You can […]<\/div>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29,16,20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8140","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-project-management","7":"category-technology","8":"category-work","9":"h-entry","11":"hentry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9380,"url":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/2022\/09\/07\/9380\/","url_meta":{"origin":8140,"position":0},"title":"I really wish Planview LeanKit\u2026","author":"Andrew Doran","date":"7 September 2022","format":"status","excerpt":"I really wish Planview LeanKit had a lower cost tier for individuals. 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It occurred to me\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Weeknotes"","block_context":{"text":"Weeknotes","link":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/category\/weeknotes\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/DraggedImage-scaled.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/DraggedImage-scaled.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/DraggedImage-scaled.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/DraggedImage-scaled.jpeg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/DraggedImage-scaled.jpeg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/DraggedImage-scaled.jpeg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":7048,"url":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/2021\/03\/14\/weeknotes-107-back-to-school\/","url_meta":{"origin":8140,"position":2},"title":"Weeknotes #107 \u2014 Back to school","author":"Andrew Doran","date":"14 March 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"A happy week. 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