Zen - This is the way all software should work
February 22 2010 10:45:00 PM
Add/Read Comments [3]
I don't promote products often, but after 5 minutes looking at Zen, I wanted to tell people about it.
Zen is an online tool for project management that follows the Personal Kanban methodology. I'm just starting to learn about this, but I can see how it could really help me manage my tasks.
Zen's UI is clean and gorgeous. It is so easy to use that there is no need for training or help. I found the selecting/highlighting of objects, collapse and expanding options, drag and drop, to all just work as I expected.
I highly encourage you to give Zen a try.
Zen is an online tool for project management that follows the Personal Kanban methodology. I'm just starting to learn about this, but I can see how it could really help me manage my tasks.
Zen's UI is clean and gorgeous. It is so easy to use that there is no need for training or help. I found the selecting/highlighting of objects, collapse and expanding options, drag and drop, to all just work as I expected.
I highly encourage you to give Zen a try.
IMO this is just a fancy front end to a very basic project management system. Whilst it may look good, from my point of view it lacks a lot of necessary functionality of a full blown project management system. Give it a few months to grow up a bit and then it might be worth taking another look at it.
Interesting - I checked out the Kanban site and it sounds almost like a reworking/rebranding of GTD. Since there's a GTD framework for Notes, how would you compare/contrast the two systems and why would you recommend one over the other (maybe you and Chris Blatnick should do a Texas Cage Match!)
Dragon and Doug, thank you for taking the time to comment.
Dragon, can you please list a few of the items you feel make up a full blown project management system, especially those you see missing from Zen. I have no affiliation with this product, I'm simply asking for my own curiosity in knowing what features may be able to help me better organize my tasks.
Doug, I'm not an expert in either GTD or Kanban, so I'd most likely have to submit to Chris in the first round! I've attended a full day GTD course, and read a little about Kanban. They both appear to be similar in that they have you first collect (or write down) your tasks and then move them into actionable categories. Obviously this makes a great deal of sense in helping people stay organized.
Currently I use a central wiki page to manage my tasks. I use a 2 column by 3 row table, with high/medium/low tasks in cells on the left, and completed items are moved to the column on the right. Each task is a single line items which links to a wiki page for the details of that task. It works well, and keeps me organized, but certainly lacks the visual appeal of Zen.