A simpler way to manage operations
May 12, 2021
Design Brief
To provide a centralised view using a single board with common denominators of Kanban (To Do, Doing and Done) and to avoid the hassle of switching between multiple boards to view the status of:
tasks for different business processes performed in an organisation.
tasks in different stages, in case of a long workflow
To display the tasks in the organisation based on individual permissions rather than displaying everything to everyone.
To enable teams working in both push (or) pull-based systems to thrive.
To provide critical information/KPIs's such as Completion Status and Action Date Status (i.e. Overdue or Due) of the tasks in a glance which would simplify their operations.
To classify the tasks based on key information in the centralised view
Challenge
As each business process might have a unique workflow, we might not be able to display every business process of an organisation on a single board since the requests might be at different stages.
As the workflow for any business process is most likely longer than 3 steps, users would not be aware of the current stage of each task based on its workflow when we try to bring multiple stages together by using a common denominator.
Process
Research & Insights
Generally, organisations use different tools or multiple projects within the same tool to manage business processes. For example, in our organisation, we used:
Jira for project tracking.
Excel for managing the sales pipeline.
Trello for roadmap prioritisation & personal task management.
We also noticed that the users contextually group stages of the workflow into distinct boards for viewing the information in biteable sizes rather than scrolling horizontally in the case of a long workflow for a business process.
As organisations begin to scale up, they start decentralising. By doing this, the management only gets the reports which the teams provide but do not have a real-time view of what is happening on the ground.
Client facing organisations usually share only specific stages of the workflow in a business process with clients. These organisations tend to notify their clients asynchronously, as the majority of the tools in the market work based on the norms of either show everything or show nothing.
Conceptualisation
Our core objective was to provide a centralised view using a single board and we were determined to use the Kanban methodology. Based on this, we started with the information architecture of the task cards which had to be displayed on the service board.
<aside> ⚠️ Heads up, the work you see below is the evolution of an iterative process that happened over the years. Being a bootstrapped lean organisation, we were constantly racing against time and did not have the luxury of time or resources to work on the features in a sequential manner. The product roadmap was completely driven, based on priority & the market. The only thing that was constant was change.
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Information Discovery Process
Information Architecture
Unique Task Number
Name of the Business Process
Classification of the Business Process
Task Summary
Task Action Date
Contextual grouping using Affinity mapping
View Density
As the volume of information was huge, we contextually grouped them and handed over control to the users to change the view density based on their preferences.
Showing Tasks Based on Permissions
We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom.
Having experienced this first hand, we thought it was sensible to show only what the user really needs to know.
It's not information overload, its filter failure.
After countless brainstorming sessions, contextual inquiry and analysing the gathered data, we were able to categorise them into two user profiles based on their goals and tasks.
So to further simplify this we narrowed it down to:
Benefits:
We were able to avoid cognitive overload for the users by displaying only the tasks that are assigned to the teams (or) individuals.
If no tasks are assigned to an individual, they can choose one from the team activity list and start working on it. This would promote transparency and help make the teams self-organised.
Providing critical information at a glance
Task Status
A way to identify the status of the tasks based on the action date
Task Situation
The situation of the task would be displayed when you hover over the unique number. We indicate the tasks for which the situation has been updated from the tasks that have not been updated yet by using a bluish-grey colour.
Task Compliance KPI
Compliance KPI indicates the compliance score average of the task, if applicable.
Task Completion KPI
We decided to indicate the status of task completion through the background colour.
Extrapolating the available task information based on user requisites
The information provided in the tasks is useful without a doubt, but when the users have the ability to view the same information in different dimensions according to their needs, it would aid the users in efficiently managing their operations in different scenarios like:
Identify where the organisation is spending their time predominantly.
Identify bottlenecks in the process.
Evaluate & Identify any irregularities.
Understand the workload of workforce.
Observe the productivity of the team.
Decide where to focus on.
Recognise which customer brings in the most value.
Multi-Dimensional views
By Tasks - Default view where tasks are not grouped based on anything
By Business Operations - The tasks are grouped by Business Operations for which they have been created. This would let them see for which business operation the organisation is spending their time predominantly.
By Stages in Workflow - ****The tasks are grouped by the steps in which the tasks are at that point of time. This would let them identify bottlenecks.
By Action Date - The tasks are grouped by Action Date associated with the tasks. This would provide the Ageing analysis view to evaluate and identify any irregularities.
By Assignee - The tasks are grouped by the Assignees to whom the tasks are designated to. This would let them see the workload of the individual.
By Assignee Team - The tasks are grouped by the Assignee Teams for which the tasks are designated to. This would let them see the productivity of the team.
By Customer - The tasks are grouped based on the Customer. This would let them see which customer brings in more value.
By Customer Classification - The tasks are grouped by the Customer Classification for which the tasks are being done. This would let them see which classification of customers drive their business.
By Priority - The tasks are grouped based on their Priority. This would let them see where to focus on.
By Classification of Business Operation - The tasks are grouped by Business Operations for which they have been created.
Solution & Final Design & Validation & Prototyping
One of the feedback that we received during the beta was that it was not possible to identify which task the particular individual was working on when more than one task was assigned to an individual.
We decided to distinguish the tasks which are actively being worked on by using a subtle glowing blimp.
Conclusion & Learning
<aside> 💭 Users are not product designers
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"When people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong." ~Neil Gaiman
Creating a centralised view for managing business operations wasn't simple. While solving the problem of switching back and forth between different views, a new problem arose—information overload. The first step in solving this was to avoid overwhelming the user and to provide value to the information being displayed. This was made possible by displaying what matters to the user with proper context and classification. The next step was to provide critical information at a glance while facilitating the control of the density of the information the user wanted to view.
[New]
Creating a centralised view for managing business operations wasn't easy. While solving the problem of switching back and forth between different views, a new problem arose—information overload. To avoid overwhelming the users, we realised that it was only possible when displaying what matters to them with proper context and classification.
By providing critical information at a glance and facilitating the control of the density of the information that they see, we have enabled the organisations to have complete visibility and transparency of tasks, thereby ensuring that all the tasks are tracked and no deadlines are missed.
This helped the organisations improve productivity to a large extent and they see this tool to be as important as email, which made it an integral part of their business routine.
<aside> ⚙️ Operational Efficiency
Improved by 30%
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<aside> 😁 Management Satisfaction Improved by 60%
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