Product Review: Microsoft Planner
I’m not a spokesperson for Microsoft Planner, but I should be. It’s no exaggeration to say that this product transformed the way I work and helped me recover from a place of burnout. Before I delve into the ins and outs of this remarkable product, let me give the context for why I find Planner to be such an effective product.
Why Use a Product Like Planner?
I am a big fan of David Allen’s productivity system, Getting Things Done (GTD). For those not familiar with the GTD methodology, one of its main tenets is that failing to document what you need to accomplish in a trusted “capture system” creates inefficiencies. If you haven’t recorded your ideas in a consistent location that you trust, your brain will continue to come back to those unfinished tasks when it has a free moment. This is why brilliant ideas will often come to you when you’re otherwise engaged, like when you’re walking the dog or taking a shower. Your brain is spending time and energy behind the scenes to ruminate on these so-called “open loops,” or unfinished items. If you’re thinking about the mundane because you’ve failed to document your next actions associated with these tasks, it may preclude you from creative breakthroughs. So, instead of coming up with brilliant new ideas when you’re in the shower, your mind may instead be running through the list of emails you need to send.
Enter Microsoft Planner—a Kanban board that I’ve found to be an excellent example of a capture system.
Originally intended to manage software development projects, a Kanban board represents an agile project management technique that can apply to almost any type of project. Using a Kanban board visually displays the list of tasks to complete and enables you to assign tasks by person, giving the team visibility into who is doing what. I find this particularly helpful as a project manager. A Kanban board gives me insight into the status of ongoing efforts, eliminating the need for mundane status meetings and preparing me to answer ad hoc client questions upon receipt of an unexpected phone call or text.
“Planner is my to do list for myself. Email is other people’s to do list for me.”
I started using Microsoft Planner at work and love that it is part of the Office 365 suite of applications, making it easy to access. I’ve created Planners for each of my projects and use the “My Tasks” view to create a daily to do list of activities that keeps me out of and away from my email. While minimizing time spent in email is an ongoing struggle, Planner is a useful antidote.
Favorite Planner Features
Assign tasks by person. In practice, the teams I lead like to assign one responsible party per task, so it is clear who is responsible for what. We double up on assigned teammates when we assign a reviewer to the task. This makes it clear who completed the original task so that the reviewer has sufficient context to perform their QA/QC. It also helps the team understand the lifecycle of a task (i.e., a task is not completed until the client approves the final product.)
Sort by due date. You can organize the tasks (called cards in Planner) in several different ways, including by person; by status (in progress, not started, or completed); by bucket; or by due date (my personal favorite.) Displaying the “My Tasks” view and then sorting by due date helps me see what I have on the docket for that day and enables me to easily reprioritize based on shifting workload and timelines.
Create separate Planners by project. This feature helps me separate tasking for the different efforts to which I contribute.
Feature Wish List
Better integration with Microsoft Excel. Planner offers a built-in chart feature that automatically creates a few sample views of your project data. It’s not particularly helpful. In the view below, you can see that the product depicts views by task status and bucket—neither of which is helpful to understand what is truly going on with my project. I don’t care that 2 of my tasks aren’t started—I care about which ones. Luckily, Microsoft Planner introduced an option to export task data to Excel. I worked with my team to create a dashboard view that displays the information I want to see the way that I want to see it. It would be nice if we could have avoided building that view from scratch, however.
Better integration with Microsoft Project. I would love the ability to integrate Microsoft Planner with Microsoft Project (although I understand this is available but hasn’t hit my organization yet.) Since many of my clients are familiar with waterfall project management techniques, I like to present an overarching schedule in Microsoft Project that shows the timeframes for an effort, without showing the messy middle of how that work gets accomplished day-to-day. Agile delivery practices, like a Kanban board, are well-suited for tracking that messy middle. It would be nice to tie the details of a schedule line item in Microsoft Project to a Planner board.
Better integration with Microsoft Outlook. While I complained earlier that I didn’t like receiving email notifications from Planner, I do wish that it integrated with Outlook tasks. This feature would help increase adoption rates among teams seeking to navigate the painful transition away from email as one’s trusted capture system. I believe Microsoft would find that building this feature would increase their user adoption rates for Planner.
Ability to assign time stamps to tasks. The productivity literature is keen on the “Rule of 3” concept, which recommends planning to complete no more than three tasks per day. Project managers reading this are probably laughing and shaking their heads, thinking “not in my job.” I valiantly tried this approach for a while and realized it wouldn’t be possible—unless I tapped into my chronotype to figure out my most productive working times. After researching my chronotype, I refined my planning approach to tackle three tasks a day for each type of work that I encounter—whether analytical, creative, or mindless. I then schedule those tasks based on the time of day that I am best suited to accomplish them. Planner helps me with this. I use the labels feature to designate the task type, but it would be much more convenient to use time stamps (e.g., morning, midday, afternoon) to classify tasks. That would give greater transparency to my team and help call my attention to when I said I was supposed to be working on something.
In short, for those looking for a no frills Kanban board to get you started on your productivity journey, look no further than Microsoft Planner. I look forward to seeing how this product continues to mature and evolve in collaboration with other Microsoft Office 365 products.
Update: One of my readers informed me that Microsoft Planner does offer an option to disable email notifications. You can do so by navigating to the Settings cogwheel and disabling notifications. Game changer! Thanks for the tip!
