Outcomes

When kanman works through many stories at once, the board shows every single one. Outcomes show the same work one level up: goals in plain language, each with its stories. Together with the board and the team chat, they tell you in the morning where your team stands: what needs you, what is happening now, what was delivered since you were away and what comes next.

Where your team stands

Open a team: it opens on its Mind, the first of its tabs Mind, Agents, Performance and Team; the board is on the Mind. An older link to a team’s overview or board opens its mind.

What needs you

On the board. An outcome card says how many of its stories wait for a person, for example 2 need you, and gets an amber edge.
In the team chat. The outcome’s card holds its requests, one at a time. See What an outcome needs from you.

What happens now

On the board. Story cards and outcome cards show what kanman is doing on them right now.
In the chat. Above the message box, 2 active agents says what kanman has running, with every agent and what it does right now; next to it, 3 stories wait on people links to the stories that wait on someone. See What kanman is working on.

Done since you were away and what comes next

Ask kanman in the team chat: “Catch me up” or “What did I miss?”. You can also turn on the morning brief to get the same every working day. kanman answers in a few lines:

Needs you: what waits for a person, when something does, and repositories whose main branch is red.
Done: the stories delivered since you were away, by outcome. Up to three are named per outcome, the rest as “+2 more”. When an outcome is complete, it says outcome reached.
Now: how many stories are in progress, with a stuck story named.
Next: the first stories of the queue with their forecast, for example “likely done tomorrow”, or “waits for approval” for a story still in Refining, and kanman’s recent pace.

Next: 3 queued: INT-1082 (likely done tomorrow), INT-1085 (waits for approval); my recent pace is 1.5 stories a day.

The forecast comes from how many stories the team delivered over the last two weeks. The card under the answer opens the team’s board, where the Done and Ready columns show the same stories.

“Since you were away” starts from the last time you looked at the team’s board, so it is personal: everyone in the team sees what is new for them. In General, the same question gives you one line per team.

Follow-up stories

The stories kanman files for work it left out of a delivered story wait as cards in the team’s Backlog until someone starts them. An outcome’s page still lists its own Later stories. See Debriefs, Later and calmer updates.

Outcomes are how kanman thinks about your team’s work. An outcome is a goal in plain language that groups the stories serving it, for example Keep Integrations dependencies current or Customers can export invoices as CSV. Each outcome shows its progress (delivered stories, weighted by their size) and its health: on track, waiting on you, or stuck.

An outcome is made for work of more than one story. A request that needs a single story stays a plain story.

Where outcomes come from

Every story gets its outcome the moment it is created:

Your requests. When kanman drafts stories from a request, the drafts card names the outcome it proposes: a new one named after the request’s goal (“Customers need to export invoices as CSV” becomes Customers can export invoices as CSV), or an open outcome the request continues. Select Change to put the stories into another outcome or to name a new one, before you approve them. Requests from Slack, Microsoft Teams, your tracker and meeting notes work the same way.
Splits and follow-ups. The parts of a split story, follow-up stories and the stories kanman files for Later stay in the outcome of the story they came from.
Maintenance. Dependency and security updates go to Keep team dependencies current, documentation fixes to Keep team docs accurate, fixes for failing pipelines to Keep nightly pipelines green, other maintenance to Keep team healthy.
Incidents. The stories of an incident go to Resolve incident key.

From proposed to delivered

State	What it means
Proposed	kanman proposed it with the drafts of a request; it becomes active when you approve a story
Active	Work is going on
Delivered	Every story is delivered or closed, and kanman wrote the outcome’s debrief
Archived	Someone closed it; its stories stay on the board

When new work arrives for a delivered or archived outcome, it is active again. An outcome can carry a goal statement (what will be true once it is delivered) and success criteria; kanman writes them when it proposes an outcome for a request.

kanman works in outcomes

Planning. When kanman plans or builds a story, it sees the outcome’s goal and the outcome’s other stories, so each change fits the whole. For an outcome with several stories, kanman first plans the whole: the order, what each story relies on and which files each changes, and it keeps that plan true while the stories run. See How kanman orders a goal’s stories.
Small stories that build on each other. When an outcome has a short chain of small stories that only make sense together, kanman does them in one go: the first story’s run works through all of them in order, each story’s criteria are checked on their own, and the stories stay separate on the board and close together. The others show Part of INT-12’s change: it lands with it while they wait. Stories that do not depend on each other still run side by side.
Answers. Status answers, “Catch me up”, the morning brief and the weekly delivery review start with the active outcomes and how far each is. Ask “What are we working on?” for the list.
Your tracker. A story written to your tracker names its outcome in the description.

What an outcome needs from you

An outcome with many stories can need you for many small things at once: a plan to approve, a merge, a question about a credential. kanman keeps them together instead of sending a message for each story.

One card per outcome in the team chat. The outcome’s card shows its progress, a dot per story, what kanman is doing on it right now (“INT-1079: running tests in flow_object_okta · 2 more working”) and what needs you. Its stories have no cards of their own; when something important happens to one of them (it is delivered, it stops, its plan changes, it needs you), the outcome’s card moves to the bottom of the chat. A story that belongs to no outcome keeps its own card.
One request at a time. “Needs you · 3 of 7” shows one question with its context and the answer buttons. When you answer, the next one slides in. Use the arrows to look ahead or back (on a phone or tablet you can also swipe left or right), and Later to move a question to the end. The questions that hold up work come first, then the ones whose answer frees the most stories, then the oldest.
One answer for the same question. When kanman asks the same thing for several stories (the same CI token or the same vendor credential for several repositories), you see the question once with Applies to 3 stories. Your answer goes to every story it applies to, and each story’s record shows it was answered together.
Several at once where it is safe. Merge all merges every merge request that is ready; each still has to pass your team’s checks, CI and rules, and one that does not stays in the list with its reason. Approve all plans approves every plan that waits for you. kanman asks once more before it goes ahead.

You find the same list in two places: on the outcome’s card in the team chat and on the outcome’s page (select its card on the board, which shows how many stories need you). On your phone, kanman sends one notification per outcome (“Keep Integrations dependencies current: 7 need you”) instead of one per story.

The outcome’s page

The outcome’s page is its own board, with only the outcome’s stories. So the board stays in view, what needs you starts folded into one line at the top: Needs you and the first question, for example “Needs you · Which GitLab CI token should I use for…”. On a large screen it sits in the middle of the page’s top row; on a phone and in a narrow window it has a line of its own under the title. Select it (or on a computer, rest the pointer on it) and the questions open over the board, which moves down a little and fades while you answer. Press Escape, select the line again or anywhere outside to fold it; after your last answer it folds and goes away by itself. The page itself does not scroll: the columns scroll inside it.

Change an outcome

Open an outcome from its card on the board or in the team chat. There you can:

Rename it. kanman’s name comes back with Use kanman’s name.
Merge it into another outcome. Its stories move along, and new stories of the same kind follow.
Archive it when it no longer matters. Its stories stay on the board.
Move a story to another outcome, out of every outcome, or into a new outcome you name.

You can do the same in the team chat: “new outcome: Faster month-end close”, “rename outcome Billing exports to CSV exports”, “merge outcome Billing exports into Customers can export invoices as CSV”, “close outcome Billing exports” or “reopen outcome Billing exports”.

kanman never moves a story you placed yourself.

A delivered outcome’s page also shows kanman’s debrief of it and the stories its work left for Later.

The workspace overview

The Teams page is the overview for everyone who looks after several teams. Each team has one row with what kanman is doing right now, or why it waits, the stories delivered in the last 7 days, the work in progress, the questions that need you, red repositories and its most active outcomes. A line at the top sums up what happened across all teams since your last visit.