This is a nifty project management tool based on Kanban principles that Jim Benson of Personal Kanban told me about during the recording of our podcast. .
What is Zen?
Zen is a simple and flexible application that draws on ideas from lean manufacturing to provide a new way of thinking about project management. Rather than organizing tasks into a bunch of lists and trying to slice and dice your way through it, Zen lets you see and interact with your work visually.
Zen draws on an idea from lean manufacturing called kanban — a Japanese word that literally means visual card. In a Zen project, work is organized on a kanban board, which has a number of columns that represent the phases that work has to go through in order to be considered complete.
Review their site at agilezen.com
The Lean Edge
This is a Question and Answer site branded as a dialogue between management thinkers and lean authors.
Lean management is a method to dramatically improve business performance by teaching people how to improve their own processes. The two main dimensions of lean management are continuous process improvement (going and seeing problems at the source, challenging operations and improving step by step) and respect for people (developing and engaging employees by developing teamwork, problem solving and respect for customers, employees and all other partners).
The Lean EDGE is a platform for discussion between management thinkers and lean management writers. Lean authors give their responses to general management questions posed by guest writers. The aim of the discussion is to share different points of view and to collectively build a vision of lean management.
Founding members are:
- Art Smalley
- Daniel T. Jones
- H. Thomas Johnson
- Jeff Liker
- Michael Ballé
- Mike Rother
- Orest Fiume
- Robert Austin
- Sandrine Olivencia
- Steven Spear
- Tom Ehrenfeld
Great resource and a great opportunity to ask some of the leading thinkers a question.