flow is a lean project management application based on kanban.
Key Benefits
- Visualize your workflow
See what is going on at a glance: How many tasks there are in each phase, and who is working on what. - Estimates are optional
flow's automatic time tracking measures your progress, which is a reliable indicator of your future performance. - Just-in-time production
Working on everything simultaneously slows you down with too many tasks in various states of completion. Finish more in less time by using Work In Progress (WIP) limits.
The first time you run flow, you will see an empty kanban board with four columns: Backlog, To-do, In Progress, and Done. These columns represent the phases each task will go through, and you can have as many columns as you need.
All new tasks are placed in the backlog, and stay there until you move them to the next phase.
The numbers next to column titles are Work In Progress (WIP) limits. A column cannot hold more tasks than the limit allows. With WIP limits:
- Tasks get completed fast, and you do not end up with a lot of half-finished tasks.
- You can balance demand against your team's capacity.
- Your cycle time gets shorter, and becomes a reliable indicator of your team's future performance.
In flow, a task is much more than a card. You can
- Assign a task to one or more members of your team
See who is working on what at a glance. - Categorize tasks — is it a feature, improvement, bug, etc.?
Not all tasks are created equal. Define different colors for different task types to set them apart. - Mark a task as ready or blocked
If another team member will continue to work on your task, mark it as ready when you are finished. If there is something preventing you to work on a task, mark it as blocked. - Post comments
Each task has its own discussion area. - Chart your progress
See how long it took to complete a task in each phase of the workflow.
You can search everything posted on your board including comments.
Unless you plan to use flow for personal kanban, you would want to invite your team(s) to flow.
If you have multiple teams, you can create a group for each team. A user can be a member of multiple groups, too.
A group can have different permissions for each project. There are four types of permissions:
| View: | View the project's board, metrics, and task details |
| Create: | Add, rename, and delete tasks |
| Work: | Move, mark, assign, and change the type of tasks |
| Comment: | Post comments to tasks |
In flow, there are three built-in groups: guests, members, and administrators. You cannot rename or delete these groups. Guests can only view projects (or not). Other permissions do not apply. Members is the default group all new users join when they accept your invite.
You can track your progress, and make estimates based on your past performance by looking at your project metrics. flow uses four core metrics:
- Tasks Completed
The number of tasks completed throughout the month including a task type breakdown. - Average Cycle Time
The average time it takes to complete a task (Backlog to Done). - Average Working Cycle Time
The average time it takes to complete a task minus the time spent in Backlog and any idle time. - Average Idle Time
The average time no one is working on a task (while it is marked as ready or blocked).
You can generate custom reports by using one or more of the following criteria:
- Tasks assigned to a group or groups
- Tasks assigned to individual users
- Task Types
flow takes hourly snapshots of your projects as you work on them. When you click a day on the calendar, you can see the state of your project on that day. Days with no activity are grayed out.
When viewing a snapshot, you will see hours under the calendar (in this case: 10 and 06) showing that changes were made on those hours. You can click the hours to see how your project looked like at each hour. All hours are automatically converted for each team member according to his/her computer's timezone settings.
When viewing a snapshot, you cannot make any changes to your board like adding or moving tasks. However, you can recover a deleted task by viewing that task's details and clicking the Undelete icon on the task's page.
REST API and Console Interface
flow supports a simple yet powerful REST API that makes it easy to integrate flow with other applications. An interactive console is included, so you can test the API from inside flow.
Private Messaging
You can use flow's built-in private messaging system to exchange messages with your members. You can also organize your messages with custom folders.
Customization
Every project is different. You may need more columns than the standard "To-do" and "In-progress", or want to define different task types. Use the projects tab to customize each project to your liking.
Pricing
flow is free for personal and open-source projects, and it is affordably priced for non-profits and commercial use. Learn more about plans & pricing.