In this article:
Step 1: Set Up Your Dashboard
Step 2: Types of Workspaces
Step 3: Design and Manage Your Board
3.1. Initiatives Workflow
3.2. Cards Workflow
3.3. Timeline Workflow
Step 4: Design Your Cards
Step 5: Configure Your Cycle Time and Analyze Your Kanban Metrics
Step 6: Businessmap Analytics
Step 7: Automate Your Process via Business Rules
Step 8: Invite Your Team Members and Manage Existing Users
Are you a first-timer with Businessmap? This guide will help you get started quickly in just 8 steps.
Step 1: Set Up Your Dashboard
The Home Dashboard (1) provides centralized information and monitoring of all Workspaces and Boards in your account. The system allows you to create multiple custom dashboards inside Businessmap to meet the unique needs of your organization.
All custom Dashboards are available under the Home button. Every new dashboard appears at the bottom of the list, but you can rearrange the order by doing a drag-and-drop of the dashboard you want to reposition.
Use the New Dashboard button (2) to create a dashboard. Each dashboard can display a combination of:
- Workspaces — add workspaces relevant to your dashboard's context.
- Widgets — add widgets, including Businessmap Analytics charts, custom search reports, and Power BI reports to track critical business health metrics.
- Workspaces and widgets — combine workspaces and widgets in a logical group (e.g. a project workspace along with its respective metrics).
The Favorite boards pane (3) located at the top of your Home Dashboard shows all boards in your account that are marked as Favorite (click on the heart icon). When you mark a board as a favorite, it will only appear as such for you, it will not appear as a favorite for other users.
The My Workspace buttons (4) let you:
- Create a Workspace
- See the Archived Workspaces and Boards panel
Use the Filter (5) option to quickly find workspaces and boards in your home dashboard.
Step 2: Types of Workspaces
Workspaces in Businessmap (1)(2) are represented by a blue or green icon. Think of a workspace as the environment that collects the boards of different departments in your organization. To get started, please refer to our guide on how to create a new workspace.
There are two types of workspaces: Management Workspace (the green icon, 1) and Team Workspace (the blue icon, 2). Each Workspace has its own settings which you can access from the three-dot icon (in the upper right corner of the workspace).
Step 3: Design and Manage Your Board
The initial board view has three main columns that illustrate where each task is on the workflow: “Requested” (To Do), “In Progress,” and “Done.” Use the "Backlog" to store cards for future implementation. To keep your board clean, don't forget to regularly archive cards. The horizontal swimlanes are used to differentiate the type of work (design, bugs, technical debt, etc.). Each board is editable and you can adjust it to any process and team. To visualize the steps of your process flow, use the workflow designer via the "Edit Workflow" icon that is available on every board.
You can learn more about the Kanban concept here.
By default, your board consists of an Initiatives Workflow (1) and a Cards Workflow (2). You can set the board to display either flow or both.
3.1. Initiatives Workflow
(1) The Initiatives Workflow is the home of automated portfolio lanes, designed for Senior team members/Project managers to easily track the progress of bigger tasks or projects. The work items in this workflow are called Initiatives. The Initiative represents a Project/Feature/Epic, etc., that you have to break down into smaller work items (child cards) that are created in the Cards Workflow. This way you can visualize complex work and all its components on separate workflows.
How does it work? When all child cards linked to the Initiative are moved to “Done,” the whole Initiative will automatically move to “Done.” For more information, please watch the short video:
In Initiatives Workflows, you can also switch to the planning view mode where you can organize your initiatives, plan your work, and visualize projects on an interactive timeline. You can learn more in our planning view guide and the short video below:
3.2. Cards Workflow
(2) The Cards Workflow is where all of the cards that your team works on are located. Mapping your team process helps you implement a pull system and limit the Work In Progress (WIP).
The card is a representation of a work item. It carries information and details about the task itself, e.g. who is responsible for the task, title, description, task priority, deadline, relevant attachments, etc. There are many ways to create cards in Businessmap.
3.3. Timeline Workflow
Adding a Timeline Workflow at the top of your board allows you to visualize your past, present, and future Initiatives in a linear calendar view. This way, you can see all planned Initiatives in a roadmap-style layout that you can set to display data by Days/Months/Weeks/Quarters/Tertiels/Years on an uninterrupted timeline. You can add the Timeline from the Edit Workflow mode of the respective board.
Step 4: Design Your Cards
You can use the default card fields/properties to input details about the respective tasks, such as deadline, size, owner, etc. The system allows you to design your card and add extra card fields (custom fields) to match your needs. Moreover, you can create card types, templates, tags, blockers & stickers to streamline your process management.
- Custom Fields — you can learn how to create and manage custom fields here.
- Card Templates — you can apply them to cards to quickly create complex card structures with predefined properties (card fields) and subtasks. To learn more, please check our kanban card templates article.
- Card Types — custom card types to categorize different types of work in your process, e.g. “Defect,” “Customer Request,” “Meeting,” etc. You can learn how to create and apply card types here.
- Card Tags — adding tags helps you group cards together and make information visible at a glance. Learn how to create and manage tags here.
- Card Tokens — The card tokens allow you to block cards or additionally mark them with a certain label for categorization. There are two types of tokens: Blockers and Stickers. You can learn more in the dedicated card tokens article.
Step 5: Configure Your Cycle Time and Analyze Your Kanban Metrics
The Cycle time is configured per board and it helps senior team members and project managers to further analyze processes and team performance. By definition, “Cycle time begins at the moment a new task enters the “In progress” stage and somebody is actually working on it until it is ready for delivery.” To learn more about lead time and cycle time, please check this lead time vs cycle time dedicated article.
To configure your Cycle time → click on the “Edit Workflows” icon on the respective board.
Both the Initiatives Workflow and the Cards Workflow may have separate cycle time configurations.
Note: If your board consists of multiple Team Workflows, each workflow may have a separate cycle time setup too.
There are various metrics that teams use to measure performance and process efficiency. Businessmap collects historical data for your workflow automatically. Other important metrics that you can track apart from cycle time are:
- Logged time indicates the pure time spent on a certain task. Users log time manually against each task or subtask.
- Blocked time shows how long a card has been blocked, respectively how much time it takes for a blocker to get resolved.
Step 6: Businessmap Analytics
The analytics module helps you identify bottlenecks and track your progress. Businessmap provides access to advanced analytics charts and forecasting models.
The Analytics works per board and presents 7 categories: Cycle Time, Throughput, WIP, Flow, Blockers, SLEs, and Forecasting, each available as a tab item on the page. Click on a tab button to view the charts for each of the respective metrics. The greatest advantage of this feature is the option to display combined Analytics for multiple Workflows on a certain board. The system supports flexible filtering, which allows focusing on a smaller portion of data for in-depth analysis.
Here is the distribution of charts in the available categories:
- Analyze Cycle time using the Scatter Plot diagram, Histogram, or Heat Map.
- Track your Throughput metric using a standard Throughput Histogram or use the Run Chart if you prefer data values displayed like this.
- Control your Work in Progress (WIP) via Aging WIP chart or find trends and patterns using the Run Chart visualization.
- Check the stability of your flow and measure flow efficiency using, respectively the Cumulative Flow Diagram and the Flow Efficiency chart.
- Get insights about your blocker distribution: what, when, and how often your cards are blocked through the Blocker Clustering and Blocker Dynamics charts.
- Use the Exceeded SLE Scatter Plot and Exceeded SLE Heat Map to track how often and by how much you and your team are exceeding SLEs.
- Use the two Monte Carlo simulations ("How many" and "When") to anticipate how many tasks your team can finish during a predetermined time frame or when a certain number of tasks might be completed.
Step 7: Automate Your Process via Business Rules
Business rules are automations that trigger an action that you define (create a card, move a card, update a card, send a notification, call web service, etc.) when a certain event occurs.
A typical example would be to automatically move a card to a particular column or to send an email notification when the card's deadline is this week. Using Business rules is an easy way to automate your processеs. You can see more practical business rules examples here.
All Business Rules are available under the Administration Panel of your account.
Step 8: Invite Your Team Members and Manage Existing Users
When you are ready with the initial Businessmap setup, you can start inviting your team members to join the account. The User Management tab in The Administration panel is the area where Account Owners manage new and existing users and their roles and privileges.
From the Administration panel, you control not only user management but also:
- Business rules (described in step 6)
- Integrations, which include:
- Email integrations with Businessmap. With the email integration, you can transform your Kanban Board into a ticketing system and get all your emails as cards.
- Integrations with other systems.
- Outcome rules to help you automate your OKRs.
- Card Management (blockers, stickers, tags)
- Security & Audit
If you need any help, you can find more guides in our Knowledge base or get in touch with our support and customer success teams. If you are on a trial and you need a demo, please fill in the form and request it. To get more information about the Kanban concept, please visit our Kanban resource page.