SwiftKanban is a project and workflow management solution. It’s designed to be a comprehensive platform to improve the productivity of small or medium-sized teams and companies. With it, you can collaborate with other different users, easily alert your management staff, and analyze data to make informed business decisions. Its simplified and intuitive dashboard allows users to make faster and smarter improvements to their company’s performance.
SwiftKanban Features
SwiftKanban is a web-based electronic portfolio that provides a set of collaboration features on various devices. The product can be used to visualize team processes and overall workflow. Graphical charts and maps that track the users work over time make this possible. Your company’s workflow can be overseen and gauged in a video timeline to see what points you need to improve or re-evaluate your service. Status updates and resource viewing are also offered for WIPs (works in progress).
SmartLane Workflow
Keeping an outline of all projects and tasks is important for productivity. This helps to monitor the steps and tasks employees need to accomplish. Where other solutions ignore or complicate these outlines, SwiftKanban uses its proprietary SmartLane feature for simplified efficiency.
The SmartLane feature uses cards to label and assign different tasks to staff. When creating the cards, you can customize them to fit your individual preferences. You can color code them and use shorthand titles to make them easier to find. In-depth descriptions can also be written to be accessed by clicking the card.
These cards can then be arranged to various “lanes”, segregated according to task or company. You can even move these to different lanes according to the stage of each project. Once moved, the system updates in real time and shows the appropriate attributes in their locations.
Each card can be arranged further by categories relevant to your business, such as the type of service, the priority of client, or delivery date. You can also let customers see the different lanes as needed. This way, they can also track the progress of each item and task.
Card-Based Notifications
SwiftKanban also features card actions for each of the card tasks users have in SmartLane. These actions can be used to update your projects or tasks per individual day. You can do any of the following actions: archive, clone, convert, move, and link cards. These features collectively make it easier to create repeating tasks and create associated tasks
Archive – Removes finished or obsolete tasks from the workflow. To highlight the change, these cards either move away or fade out from the interface.
Clone – Copies the card and pastes it to any part of the workflow. When doing so, it also copies all the settings on that card, which you can still modify.
Convert – Changes the card to any other type or process. You can copy the entire card or change the request without removing the details.
Move – Changes where you place the card. Like desktop files, you can transfer it either to folders, tables, or lanes in the workflow. Several cards can be moved simultaneously.
Link – Connects the cards together. If you finish a task, you can trace its connected cards to see what other assignments can now be done.
You can also track each card’s age or time of notification. The more time passes for a status or task, the more it fades accordingly. The number of days it takes to fade away can also be configured.
Performance and Progress Chart
Even though there’s an outline, your company needs to track how much progress is made. Keeping track of how much work employees do in timed intervals can help to uncover who is more efficient. As has been mentioned, SwiftKanban uses various data-based charts and visuals to make monitoring easier.
When tracking a team’s performance, you can use the number of archived cards per member as a basis. This can help display how much they have done for the project. You can also check these archived cards on timed intervals, whether they are checked daily, weekly, or monthly.
There are two types of charts that can be used to analyze performance: cycle time and cumulative flow. When making cycle time charts, you can choose four different types for better visualization. It can be shown as a line graph, a bar graph, a point chart, and a timeline bar chart. These can be color-coded according to task, status, or personnel. You can also choose the dates from which to pull the data.
When making the cumulative flow diagram (CFD), you are shown a color-coded growth chart. Each growing flow is color-coded to reference a card type or attribute. Whilst the cycle time focuses on the amount of work done per card, the CFD shows you the overall progress. You can see how it all accumulates from development to release, and track the total number of cards finished.
Employee Interaction and Collaboration
Communication is key to improving your business and expanding your reach. However, most solutions make communication a laborious process. To combat this, SwiftKanban has a communication system for the software. It is designed to be similar to social media platforms to make the system simpler and more enjoyable.
Your communication with your employees or personnel from other companies is displayed via online threads. These threads are connected to each card on the workflow. They can be used to add comments and tag your coworkers with their profile names. You or your other staffers can then respond to these comments.
Company-based private chats can also be held that can either be exclusive to one person or involve entire groups. The chats appear on the side of your dashboard to avoid interrupting any other tasks. Once you do mention or message them, they receive notifications from either their widgets or through email.
SwiftKanban Benefits
SwiftKanban combines a simple interface with an in-depth variety of features. The card system for your workflow is a great example of this. The cards themselves can be used to assign tasks, and comes with color-coding and fade mechanics to emphasize role and urgency. The card actions also make it easier to correlate tasks to each other, especially if you’re working on complex projects with multiple dependencies.
Data analysis and performance tracking via SwiftKanban is also an impressive affair. You can easily use these to assess your staff and their performance, especially since they let you filter through the data to find specific information.
The messaging and collaboration aspect of the software product is somewhat hard-coded into the system. System-wide or one-on-one chats can be run natively within the application, which makes it great for collaboration. But, while the task-based collaboration and commenting system are great, there can be an issue of keeping track of important messages. The lack of a search feature for messages might be a deal-breaker for some. Also, the lack of a message conversion feature can make it more difficult to act on pressing messages from key personnel.
SwiftKanban Pricing
SwiftKanban has a demo for all of its products that last 30 days. If you want to purchase, there are four different tiers of service with monthly subscription fees. You can also pay these annually and have the product installed on-premise or via the cloud.
The first product is called “Team” and is free. It lasts only two years but gives you access to basic features for small groups. It’s recommended for startup groups on a tight budget. The features included are:
- 10-user limit
- Four project boards
- Basic analytics
- Five card types
- Standard templates
The second product is called “Group” and is available at $7 per user. This package expands with detailed data analysis and data export. It’s recommended for small or medium-sized companies. All previous features are included and expand to:
- 50-user limit
- 20 project boards
- Advanced analytics
- 10 customizable card types
- Custom templates
- Group creation
- Data import and export
The third product is called “Enterprise” and is available at $15 per user. This package expands with workflow lanes and card hierarchies. It’s recommended for conglomerates with lots of projects at once. All previous features are included and expand to:
- Unlimited user limit
- Unlimited project boards
- Exhaustive analytics
- Unlimited customizable card types
- Dashboards
- Enterprise boards
- Card hierarchy
- Workflow lanes
The fourth product is called “ESP Module” and is available at $15 per user. This package is an add-on to the Enterprise and expands with risk assessment and data forecasting. It’s recommended for companies wishing for long-term planning tools. All previous features are included and expand to:
- Risk assessment
- Demand and capability analysis
- Aging
- Fluidity
- Scope and capacity forecast
Conclusion
SwiftKanban is an online workflow management solution. It has several features including project boards, notification templates, and color-coded visual graphs. It stands out thanks to its customizable card system, in-depth data reporting charts, and collaboration system. This platform is recommended if your company wants quality data reporting with simple graphics and intuitive task updates.
