Kanban for Photographers
The basic idea behind kanban is simple. The key components of kanban are cards and a board divided into columns representing project stages. In the most simple scenario, the project may consist of three stages: To Do, Doing, and Done. Each card represents a project task, and you move cards from one project stage to another as you work on the tasks and complete them. In the case of the To Do-Doing-Done project system, you start with placing all the cards into the To Do column, then move the tasks you are currently working on to the Doing column. And when the task is completed, you push it to the Done column.
As a photographer, you can use the kanban methodology to manage your photography-related activities and photographic projects more efficiently, and the Kanboard application can help you with that.
To deploy Kanboard, you need a machine running a web server (e.g., Apache) and PHP. While the application supports several database back ends, it uses the SQLite database engine by default that requires no setup or configuration. Installing Kanboard is rather straightforward. Fetch the latest version of Kanboard from the project’s website, unpack the downloaded archive, rename the resulting directory to kanboard, and move it to the document root of the server (e.g., /var/www). Make the kanboard directory writable by the server using the chown www-data:www-data -R kanboard command, and you are done. Point the browser to http://127.0.0.1/kanboard (replace 127.0.0.1 with the actual IP address or domain name of the server running Kanboard) and log in using the default admin/admin user name and password.
Kanboard Basics
The first step is to change the default login credentials. Expand the User menu in the upper-right corner of Kanboard’s interface, choose My Profile, and click on the Edit Profile item in the Actions section. Modify the default name and email, and press Save. Click on the Change password link and change the default password.
Next stop is the application’s settings section (choose Settings from the User menu). While you can leave most options at their defaults, there are a couple of settings you might want to modify. In the Application settings section, you can change the interface language and timezone as well as specify the desired time format. By default, Kanboard uses four project columns: Backlog, Ready, Work in progress, and Done. But you can change that in the Project settings section by entering the desired column names into the appropriate field. You can define custom column names for individual projects, too (more about it later).
Now you are ready to create your first project. To do this, switch to the Dashboard and click the New Project (a project that can be accessed by other Kanboard users) or New Private Project (a project accessible only by you) link. Give the project a descriptive name and press Save. This creates the project and switches to the settings area. There are a few options you can modify here. If you prefer to use custom tags for project tasks, you can specify them in the Tags section. By default, all projects in Kanboard are private, i.e. the user must be logged in to the application in order to access projects. However, the application also allows you to make projects public. To do this, switch to the Public access section and press the Enable public access button. This not only makes the project public, but also generates RSS and iCal feeds for others to subscribe to. If you need to add, remove, and rearrange columns, you can do this in the Columns section.
How you use Kanboard to manage your photographic projects is entirely up to you. One possible scenario is to create a dedicated project for all your photography-related tasks for the current year. This project would have five columns:
- Events column for keeping track of events and tradeshows
- Interesting topics, potential locations, etc. are saved in the Research column
- Topics that have been research and are ready to explore then moved to the Ready column
- The Upcoming column holds all the tasks for the coming days and weeks
- Once the task has been completed, it’s archived in the Done column
Each task in Kanboard is represented by a card, and you can create tasks by clicking the + sign next to the appropriate column. Using the available fields and options in the New Task dialog, you can give the task a name, a description, assign tags, and specify color. You can also specify the task’s priority and complexity as well as its start and due dates along with the estimated number of hours required to complete the task. Since Kanboard lets you manage projects visually, card colors can act as important identifiers. So you might want to devise a system for using specific colors right from the start.
With the first project ready to go, you can start exploring Kanboard. The application’s interface consists of several views. As the name suggests, the Overview view gives you a brief overview of the current project, including the number of tasks in each project column, and a list of recent activity. Board is probably the most important view in Kanboard that displays the project as a board divided into columns representing project stages. Tasks on the board are shown as cards, and you can move them from one column to another using the mouse. You can add new tasks to a column by clicking on the + icon next to it. The Calendar view displays the tasks that have a due date, while the List view shows tasks as a regular list. Finally, the Gantt view displays the project tasks and relationships between them on a timeline (more about task relationships later). You can use the mouse to move the tasks on the timeline as well as adjust the duration and due date of each task.
Under the Main menu, you’ll find a handful of useful items. The Analytics command, for example, gives you access to the Analytics area with various charts and graphs, such as Task distribution, Cumulative flow, Average time into each column, etc.
The Filter bar in Kanboard’s interface is used to filter tasks by specific criteria, and the application comes with several default filtering rules like My tasks, Tasks due today, Open tasks, etc. In addition to that, you can specify queries on the fly using special syntax. For example, the status:open status:closed query displays all opened and closed tasks. Better still, Kanboard makes it possible to create custom filters. To create a filter, choose Custom filters from the main menu, give the new filter a name, and specify the desired filtering rule. For example, to view all opened and closed tasks, specify the status:open status:closed query. Press Save, and you can access the created filter using the dedicated menu in the Filter bar.
Tasks in Kanboard are not just simple entries, but containers that can hold a lot of useful information. And the application provides a dedicated interface for working with tasks. To switch to it, click on the desired task in any of Kanboard’s views. This opens the task view, where you can see the task’s summary, view the task’s activity and its transitions (the task’s movements between project columns) and analytics. The Edit the task command opens the familiar task editing dialog where you can modify the task’s settings. It’s also possible to add external links to a task. This functionality can come in useful for storing links that point to local files, websites, and attachments. Moreover, each task can contain a number of sub-tasks that can be added using the the Add a sub-task command.
In Conclusion
Kanboard is not designed specifically for photographers, but it can make a useful addition to your photographic toolbox. And with a bit of creative thinking you can put Kanboard to a variety of photography-related uses: from planing trips and photo walks to researching potential locations and keeping track of photography events.
I write about Linux and Open Source for a living. I’m an amateur photographer, and I use Linux as my photography platform. I’m the author of the digiKam Recipes and Linux Photography books.
