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WSSFC Technology Track Session 5 Project Management and Collaboration in the Cloud Katrina C. Jasaitis Solfecta LLC, Waterford Nerino J. Petro, Jr. Holmstrom & Kennedy P.C., Rockford

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WSSFC Technology Track

Session 5

Project Management and

Collaboration in the Cloud

Katrina C. Jasaitis Solfecta LLC, Waterford

Nerino J. Petro, Jr.

Holmstrom & Kennedy P.C., Rockford

Project Management and

Collaboration in the Cloud

Katrina C. Jasaitis, Solfecta

Nerino J. Petro, Jr. Holmstrom & Kennedy, P.C.

1 | P a g e

The cloud offers new opportunities to collaborate with clients and colleagues. Learn how to manage

projects and safely share information with others in the new digital age.

Contents What is Legal Project Management? ............................................................................................................ 1

Legal Project Management and Collaboration Tools in the Cloud. .............................................................. 7

Appendix A: Visual Workflow Applications ................................................................................................... 8

KATRINA L. JASAITIS

Partner

SOLFECTA Chicago

180 N Stetson Street, Suite 3500

Chicago, IL 60601

855-298-4495

ATTORNEY NERINO J. PETRO, JR.

CIO

Holmstrom & Kennedy, P.C.

800 N. Church Street

Rockford, IL 61103

815.962.7071

[email protected]

Cover image by George Thomas http://bit.ly/1wkjWMV under the Creative Commons Attribution License

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

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What is Legal Project Management?

Legal Project Management is referred to as LPM. This can be confusing as for years LPM was considered

to refer to Law Practice Management. For the purposes of these materials, LPM will refer to Legal

Project Management.

Pamela Woldow and Douglas Richardson define Legal Project Management as:1

A systematic approach

For scoping, planning, managing, and controlling legal work

Within clearly understood – by both law firm and client –time, budget, and performance

requirements

That also captures lessons learned after a project is complete in order to enhance future

performance.

In large firms, LPM is no longer the oddity but the norm and is actively used to attract business.2

For smaller firms this can be overwhelming and overkill in many instances. Small firms do not have the

same level of staffing and resources that larger firms do and their matters are often smaller. However,

many of the basic concepts of large scale LPM are applicable to smaller firms. Especially since the

economic meltdown of 2008, many clients have focused on cost containment for their legal matters and

one of the ways is to look to firms that are innovating in tested methodologies used by other industries

to improve efficiencies and manage costs. Woldow and Richardson echo this when they write:3

“At its core, legal project management (LPM) is about two things:

performing legal work more efficiently and

managing uncertainty.”

1 Woldow, Pamela H and Douglas B., Legal Project Management in One Hour for Lawyers, ABA Law Practice

Division 2013,vii.

2 Seyfarth Shaw is one example. http://seyfarth.com/seyfarthlean while BakerDonelson is another

http://bit.ly/1oI5DN0 .

3 Woldow and Douglas, Legal Project Management in One Hour for Lawyers, vii.

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For clients, one of the largest uncertainties is cost. This emphasis on LPM has also been one of the

driving forces behind the increased adoption of Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFAs) in the legal

profession. Clients and firms that have adopted LPM methodologies have found that it results in greater

efficiencies, the ability to deliver certainty (or less uncertainty) and better client relations. But make no

mistake, modern LPM is not the case management of 10 or 20 years ago, modern LPM takes advantage

of project management principles and methods that have been tested in other industries for years. As

with many things in society and business overall, the legal profession has been hesitant (actually

recalcitrant would actually be more accurate) to change the traditional business and case management

model of a central case manager and hourly billing.

Traditional LPM uses what is referred to as a hub and spoke model (see Image 1 ):

In this model, a persona responsible for the case sits at the center of the matter (the hub) who controls

the workflow and sends the tasks and information out to each team member and collects the

information back from them (the spokes). Generally, the team members have little or no interaction

with each other and their assignments are issued from and flow back to the central manager. While this

method works (think about your own firm – chances are this is exactly how you manage cases), if there

are more than two people involved or it is a very small matter, it is inefficient. The hub and spoke model

of management requires that all information must travel back to the central manger before being

disseminated to the rest of the team members and to other critical stakeholders. One of the more

important maxims of PM is that you need to keep all of the important stakeholders “in the loop” at all

times. Collaboration should be your goal and you may have more than one project manager or perhaps

Image 1 Hub & Spoke Project Team

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you may even have what is known as a “leaderless team”: there is no one project manager, instead all of

the team members act as project managers with responsibility to keep everyone else informed.

Leaderless teams are often found in Agile4 methods of project management. Compare and contrast

Image 1 with Image 2 where all of the team members have a seat at the table. Which team do you think

will react faster and more readily share information so that all team members know what is going on?

Image 2 Agile Project Management Team

Agile in and of itself isn’t so much a set methodology as it is a concept that focuses on several key

values. Originally developed by and for software developers, Agile focused on 4 keys values:

1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools;

2. Working software over comprehensive documentation;

3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation;

4. Responding to change over following a plan

These key values can be found in a number of methods for managing projects. A few of the better

known include:

DSDM (Dynamic Systems Development Method) http://www.dsdm.org/

Scrum https://www.scrum.org/ 5

XP (Extreme Programming) http://www.extremeprogramming.org/

Lean http://www.lean.org/whatslean/

4 See http://www.allaboutagile.com/what-is-agile-10-key-principles/, and

http://www.versionone.com/Agile101/Agile-Development-Overview/ for some background information on Agile.

5 The Scrum Guide ™ cab be downloaded at http://bit.ly/1f9Rncz

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Kanban http://kanbanblog.com/explained/

All of these Agile methodologies have been influenced by the Toyota Production System (TPS) which has

6 core principles:6

1 Continuous improvement

2 Respect for people

3 Long-term philosophy

4 The right process will produce the right results

5 Add value to the organization by developing your people and partners

6 Continuously solving root problems drives organizational learning

While these methodologies started in manufacturing and software development, their core ideas and

principles can be used in many industries, legal and other professions are also finding that they can be

adapted to improve project management. Since these movement for LPM has been primarily been used

by in-house counsel when dealing with outside firms, smaller firms and solos often believe that LPM is

“only for the bug guys.” Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, solo and small firm

practitioners can gain as much or more by implementing LPM to improve efficiencies contain costs and

better client relations. To understand LPM, let’s take a look at how LPM breaks down a project.

LPM generally focuses on four phases of a matter as shown in this Image:

Image 3 The 4 phases of LPM7

This is a model that can be adapted for a small case as well as a larger case. The key is to break it down

into its individual phases. While the phases and the tasks they cover can fill page after page, with great

detail, they can also be encompassed on a few pages in a notebook. And while firms like Seyfarth have

6 See http://bit.ly/1oHTnvX; http://bit.ly/1oHVdNp and http://bit.ly/1oHVtw4 for more details.

7Guide to ACC Value Challenge Project Management http://bit.ly/1s0UbgJ p. 5.

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created their own LPM software tools, software is not a requirement for LPM and can be done with

tools as simple as a hand drawn Gantt chart such as this one:

Image 4 hand drawn Gantt chart for an M & A Transaction8

This is not to say that you can’t use software and in fact there are a number for free and commercial

tools that can help you with LPM. Many are based on the Agile methodologies mentioned earlier,

including but by no means limited to:

Trello https://trello.com/

Asana https://asana.com/

Wrike https://www.wrike.com/

LawPal https://lawpal.com/

KanBan Flow https://kanbanflow.com/

Basecamp https://basecamp.com/

They key to these tools in addition to the ability to schedule, create checklists and attach documents is

the ability to use them to collaborate and share that information with other stakeholders on the team.

These tools allow everyone on the team to see the status of current tasks, what remains to be

completed and to easily share updates and changes without having to send individual emails or message

to each team member. Used in conjunction with other tools such as Google Drive, Dropbox or

Office365/OneDrive and teams can collaborate in real time on drafting and changing documents,

8 Woldow and Douglas, Legal Project Management in One Hour for Lawyers, 49.

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strategies and more. So while online tools aren’t a requirement for LPM, they can make your life a lot

easier so they will be addressed in Part 2 of these materials.

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Legal Project Management and Collaboration Tools in the Cloud.

{This part to be provided by Kate}

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Appendix A: Visual Workflow Applications

Written by: Aaron W. Brooks Holmstrom & Kennedy, P.C. Presented at: ABA TECHSHOW 2014

INTRODUCTION

In 1974, as part of the BBC television series and corresponding book title “Use

Your Head,” British author Tony Buzan coined the term “mind mapping.” In so doing,

Buzan undertook a detailed review of how human brains process and store information,

and demonstrated how poorly our neural connections correspond to our physical

systems for communicating, processing, and storing information. Specifically, he

challenges the several-hundred-years-old belief that human minds work in a linear or

list-like manner, and that linear methods of using information (such as speech and print)

are efficient means of doing so. Buzan argues that when humans interpret speech or

written text, we are not doing so by taking in the words one at a time and processing

them in the linear manner in which they are delivered; rather, we receive each word in

the context within which it is presented with the others. Further, we find that much more

information can be conveyed much more efficiently using nonlinear methods, such as

photographs and diagrams.9 Buzan’s mind mapping technique is based, therefore, on

the idea that “rather than starting from the top and working down in sentences or lists,

one should start from the centre or main idea and branch out as dictated by the

individual ideas and general form of the central theme.”10

We see this problem having perpetuated itself into the information age and the

tools we use to process and manage electronic information. Nearly all major operating

systems and project management software platforms organize information in a linear

fashion, using lists and linear text. The foundation of the Windows operating system, for

example, is the linear file management system which organizes information in rigidly

9 Next time you search Google, try running the search under the Images tab, as opposed to the Web tab. Often, the

same results will come about even when the search is for text-based material, but processing the results can

happen much more quickly.

10 Buzan, Tony. Use Your Head. London: Guild Publishing, 1974. Print (P. 91)

Project Management and Collaboration in the Cloud

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nested folders and subfolders which can only be sorted according to a few built in fields

like name, date, size, and file type. Other than the rudimentary Windows desktop, there

is no inherent ability within the operating system and most software to sort projects and

information manually or organize information objects visually in a “mind mapping” style

of layout.

These problems are changing, however. Certain specific advancements in the

fields of manufacturing and software development have driven an explosion of new

project management and information sorting tools which are based upon manual visual

arrangements and not rigid linear structures. Study after study shows that these newer

methods of organizing information and managing projects can bring great leaps of

efficiency and elimination of waste. The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief

overview of the basic workflow theories which have spawned those innovations,

suggest ways in which they could be (and even already are) used within law office

workflow models, and provide specific guidance about how to find and use these new

tools.

THE TOYOTA PRODUCTION SYSTEM

The Toyota Production System was developed beginning in 1948 by industrial

engineering expert Taiichi Ohno. His foundational book, Toyota Production System:

Beyond Large-Scale Production11 became the basis for what we now refer to as “lean

manufacturing” or “just-in-time production.” The concept is often rumored to have

originated from a research project focused on the American automotive industry which,

serendipitously, led to their discovery of the stocking and shipping mechanisms

underlying the American supermarket system. Ohno and his research team noticed how

the newly emerging supermarkets had mastered the skill of managing large and diverse

inventories of food in a manner that allowed for producing, moving, and offering for sale

perishable items with a high degree of precision and timing (without which the

supermarkets would have experienced excessive waste). In other words, supermarkets

flourished as a result of their ability to supply perishable food items at the very moment

of consumer demand, and they did so by carefully managing the production workflow

11 Ohno, Taiichi. Toyota seisan hoshiki. Tokyo: Diamond, Inc. 1988. Print.

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throughout the entire production system. Ohno adapted the supermarket system to

manufacturing by isolating seven specific kinds of wastes that must be managed and

eliminated to achieve peak efficiency. These wastes (or “muda”) are:

(i) Overproduction, by producing more than the immediate needs of a customer;

(ii) Excessive Inventory, by storing more materials than can be processed;

(iii) Wasted Time, by production bottlenecks that cause resources to become idle;

(iv) Excessive Transportation, by moving materials or products unnecessarily;

(v) Overprocessing, through added production effort that doesn’t contribute to value;

(vi) Excessive Motion, through added system effort that is duplicative or unnecessary; and

(vii) Defects, through extra costs in reworking products.

These seven wastes have been systematically analyzed throughout many aspects of

the service industry as well, which has led to the emergence of an entire field of

productivity known as “lean service”. So too, some large law firms are now embracing

the concept of lean services. For example, SeyfarthShaw has adopted a robust lean

services program, and has published much of their lean philosophy online.12

Thus, the fundamental goal of a lean manufacturing or lean service system is to

carefully evaluate where and how each of these seven core wastes may be present,

and implement systematic and uniform controls to minimize or eliminate them. One of

the foundational elements of lean systems used to accomplish this is known as a

“Kanban.”

KANBAN

“Kanban” is a Japanese word meaning “signboard” or “billboard”. It is a tool used

to arrange all necessary elements of a workflow system into a single process that allows

12 http://www.seyfarth.com/SeyfarthLean

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for big picture management of the entire production flow, and identification of production

wastes. The point is to systematically move all workflow components in a way to help

ensure that each component of production is prioritized and managed, so to eliminate

as much production waste as possible. In the original manufacturing sense, a Kanban

system was comprised of bins (which contain parts needed for production) and cards

(which contain information about how the materials are to be processed and

replenished).

This basic notion has been adopted throughout service industries by using a

similar visual workflow technique called a Kanban board. The most basic type of

Kanban board is shown below:

In this illustration, and in the most simple of systems, each card that is pinned to the

Kanban board should represent a specific task that can be accomplished and marked

complete (as opposed to a project containing many interrelated tasks, or a system

requiring regular repetitions of the same set of tasks). The “Doing” section should not

contain more tasks than can be meaningfully done in a single processing session (such

as a workday), and the “To-Do” section should not contain more tasks than can be

processed within the overall waiting time that clients consider acceptable. If the “Doing”

section contains too many tasks, we tend to experience waste and overload in the form

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of multitasking – thus, a specific “work in process” limit should be set to cap the total

number of tasks that can be realistically considered “in process.” Excess tasks should

be moved back to “To-Do”.

Similarly, if the “To-Do” section contains too many tasks, we also experience

waste in the form of production delays, late work, and lost prioritization. Excess tasks in

this section should be moved to “Delegated” and given to other workers who have

excess capacity, or they should be added to a workflow backlog and calendared for

future reference.

When a worker has completed all possible work on a task, its corresponding card

should be moved either to “Waiting” (meaning the work has been shipped to another

person for processing and its return is expected) or to “Done” (meaning it has been

processed to a state that no person need refer to it again). The “Waiting” section should

be calendared for review on a routine scheduled basis, and tasks which languish in this

section should at some point be moved back to “To-Do” and then “Doing” (at which

point the “task” may simply be to place a phone call or send an email to check on status

and elevate the item within the other person’s realm of priorities). By following this

process of recycling “waiting” items back through the Kanban, the system causes the

languishing task to be revived.

KEY VISUAL WORKFLOW APPLICATION: TRELLO OVERVIEW

As the notion of lean workflow and Kanban process management have shown

success throughout the service industry, more and more software applications and

reference resources about these concepts have emerged. As a starting point for

individuals who wish to try a simple lean system, I recommend reading a book entitled

Personal Kanban13 and signing up for a free account with the cloud-based application

13 Benson, Jim & Barry, Tonianne DeMaria, Personal Kanban. Seattle: Modus Cooperandi Press, 2011.

Print.

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called Trello.14 The following is a short guide for how Trello works, and perhaps how to

use it most efficiently.

Trello is a way to organize projects and tasks using the Kanban concepts

described above. The application has four levels of organizational hierarchy:

(i) Organizations: This is the highest level upon which your projects and tasks can be separated. Everything stored in Trello is, ultimately, inside one or more Organizations.

(ii) Boards: Inside each Trello Organization is one or Boards. Each Board represents a separate Kanban board as pictured earlier in this paper.

(iii) Cards: Upon each Board is one or more Cards. Each Card represents a task or project that is being tracked across the Board.

(iii) Card Items: Each Trello Card can be opened, and within the Card are several items that can be used to help manage the project or task represented by the Card. For example, Cards can hold checklists, free text comments, photographs, deadlines, etc.

Thus, a Trello account is best managed by first creating Organizations to broadly define

categories of projects. For example, one might create one Organization for “personal”

matters, and another Organization for “work” matters. Within each Organization, a

separate Board can be created representing individual projects to be managed within

that area, and upon each Board one might add all the individual tasks needed to

accomplish the project represented by that Board. When designing this type of workflow

for legal projects, it’s important to maintain a specific nomenclature that allows for

management of projects in a matter-centric fashion. Thus, if one names Organizations

and Boards with a consistent method (such as “Work - Client One - Matter One - Project

One”), all the Organizations and Boards will sort themselves in a logical and organized

way.

14 https://trello.com/

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To better illustrate, here is

a screenshot from the

homepage of a Trello

account. Here you can see

the hierarchy of

Organizations and

Boards, and example of

how one might organize a

personal workflow method

around these constructs.

When a Board is opened from any Organization, it reveals a customizable workspace

that allows for creating lists and, within each list, Cards used to represent projects or

tasks. For example, in the illustration below, I’ve created lists called To-Do, Doing,

Waiting, Delegated, and Done:

The Cards on this Board (such as “Make Travel Arrangements”) can be easily dragged

and dropped from one list to another, thereby allowing the projects and tasks to be

visually managed according to a lean priority system. Also, the Board is easily updated

and expanded; clicking “Add a card” at the bottom of any list, or “Add a list” at the far

right side, causes those actions to occur in a pop-up window inside the browser. There

is no client-side software associated with Trello, it is entirely browser-based, so the

system will work across multiple devices and on any computer operating system.

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As mentioned above, Trello

Cards contain a number of

items that are useful for

managing the task or project

that the Card represents.

The Card Items open

automatically when a Card

is clicked, and all the Card

items move with it whenever

the Card is repositioned on

the Trello Board.

As shown above, for every project or task that is represented by a Trello Card, one can

add progress notes, phone numbers, and even hyperlinks to other resources.

Additionally, one or more checklists can be added, and when this is done the

individual progress of checklist items will be shown within the Card, and the overall

progress of the checklist is shown on the face of the card when viewing the entire

Board:

Trello Boards also contain a very powerful way to collaborate with other people

(including people outside your firm, such as clients and other attorneys) and also to

track all the activity of everyone doing work on the Board in a chronological big-picture

view.

Checklist as viewed from the Board

Checklist shown inside a Card

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The collaboration and progress tracking

tool is located all the way to the right of the

screen, behind a link called “Show Sidebar”.

When this is clicked, the sidebar opens, revealing

an area to view and add members to the Board.

Anyone with a free Trello account can be added

to the Board, and allowed to add or modify cards

and move them around the Board in a way that

all the other members can see.

Additionally, when any Board member

changes anything on the Board or within any

Card or Card Item, that activity is logged in a

chronological fashion to allow the entire board

history to be viewed in one place.

One can easily see that Trello’s collaboration and tracking tool would allow

members of a large team to work together on a single project, using a single cloud-

based tool to communicate, prioritize, and jointly view all the elements of the project.

Board members can even link documents to a card from cloud-based document storage

systems such as Dropbox and Google Drive.

CLOUD BASED FUNCTIONALITY

Because Trello is a cloud-based application, it can be accessed from any

location with an Internet connection, and it automatically syncs across multiple devices.

Thus, if you add or update a Trello Card on any board from your mobile device, the

Card will automatically appear on your desktop, tablet or other computing devices.

Trello provides free applications for both Android and Apple phones and tablets. The

downside is that Trello does not have a local storage function; thus, you will not have

access to Trello information in locations that are without connectivity.

When using any cloud-based system, it is important to address privacy and

security issues that might impact the type of information being stored within the system.

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The following is a basic checklist of items one should consider when making this

evaluation:

1. End User License Agreement. Carefully review the End User License

Agreement to confirm that the information will be made available as needed, and that it

will be treated confidentially.

2. Special Use Agreements. Understand any ancillary agreements that

may need to be added to the End User License Agreement under applicable

regulations. For example, HIPAA Covered Entities and their Business Associates are

generally required to sign a Business Associate Agreement with third party data storage

entities where the service is used to store Protected Health Information.

3. Security and Encryption. Understand any encryption requirements or

safe harbors applicable to the type of information being stored. For example, HIPAA

Covered Entities can gain protection against breach notification events if Protected

Health Information is managed in accordance with standards set by NIST for data at

rest (such as on the Trello servers), data in motion (meaning the transmission between

your device and the Trello servers), and data at end of life (meaning the final secure

disposal of the hard drive or other storage device used to house the information being

uploaded).

4. Breach Notification Laws. Understand any breach notification laws that

may apply to the information being uploaded to ensure that a mechanism is in place to

provide the required notices if a security incident might occur. Most states have laws

that require notification if certain personally identifiable information is subject to a

security breach.

5. Local Encryption. It’s good practice to encrypt any personal device that

you use to manage personally identifiable information, even if the information is stored

in the cloud. Even cloud-based applications can leave traces of information on the local

device in the course of using locally stored caches and temporary files to manage the

user experience. Moreover, it is both possible and helpful to set most cloud-based

applications to automatically log in upon launching; however, if the computer or mobile

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device that’s configured this way is not encrypted, a loss or theft of that device would

allow access to anyone who comes into possession just as easily.

VISUAL WORKFLOW IDEAS

Visual workflow applications like Trello are completely customizable, and can be

set up in just about anyway a person can think of to organize a workflow. However, as a

starting point, I recommend becoming familiar with four basic workflow models,

summarized as follows:

1. Traditional Kanban. This model has been discussed in detail above. For

purposes of setting up a Trello Board, one would create a new board inside any

Organization, and within that Board set up the following lists: To-Do, Doing, Waiting,

Delegated, and Done. Under this workflow model, cards are moved horizontally to

show their overall status in the workflow, and vertically to show their individual priority

amongst the other cards in that list.

2. Goals and Actions. The Goals and Actions workflow method uses

Board lists to designate each project being represented on the Board. For example, one

could organize a business transaction by creating a Board list for each document that

makes up the transaction, and under each list create a Card for the issues that need to

be addressed for that component. In this workflow model, Cards are only moved

vertically, so the items under each component may be kept in the order of next priority.

Within each card, one might add progress notes for the particular issue being

represented by the card. For example, if indemnification issues are being negotiated

within an Asset Purchase Agreement, the card for indemnification could contain notes

from meetings and telephone calls on that issue, as well as attached documents with

sample clauses for reference. The resulting Board for this sample transaction might look

like this:

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3. Person-Centric. Similar to the Goals and Actions workflow, this Board

organizational model is focused on the relative needs and priority of specific people or

organizations. For example, a Person-Centric workflow could be used to track

marketing efforts by creating the following lists: New Contacts; Transitional and

Ready to Hire; Single Project Client; Ongoing Engagements; and Inactive Clients.

By organizing your client prospects in this manner, it should be easy to keep track of the

status of all clients and potential clients, together with their status as moving towards an

ongoing engagement. Such an organizational method can prompt follow-up calls

through deadlines set on the Card, and help organize materials relating to the potential

client (like contact information or scanned business cards).

4. Complex Writing Projects. Visual workflow methods are ideal for

organizing a sprawling writing project, such as a novel, memoir, or treatise. Under this

workflow model, each list would represent a section of the work to be written (such as

Act One, Act Two, and Act Three), and the cards would be organized according to their

relative position within the document. This provides a very flexible way of writing,

because cards can be arranged as if on a storyboard, and the actual text of the chapter,

scene or section will move along with the card (and can even be attached as a Dropbox

or Google Drive document). This eliminates the urge to write a large project in a rigid

linear manner, and allows for the entire document to be arranged and rearranged as

concepts develop and more logical designs for editing and final linear layout become

clear. In other words, a Kanban board would allow one to add written materials as the

ideas or research emerge, and order them into a logical sequence as the work

progresses.

Such a workflow might look like this:

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CONCLUSION

In short, forward thinking manufacturing and service industries have embraced

the concept of visual workflow applications as a best practices approach to managing

information and projects. Both science and production outcomes support the notion that

manual and visual methods of organizing data are vastly superior to linear systems like

lists and rigid computer file structures. I believe there is a growing recognition that these

systems and methods can be just as useful and effective in the practice of law as they

have been shown to be in other service areas, and I hope the readers and seminar

attendees for this topic will take a close look at Trello and the background materials

presented herein.