Ah the ol' trusty make ready board. To be honest, for what it does I'm kind of a fan. It, in its essence, is the principle of "keep it simple stupid!". A nice visual way to communicate things.

Twenty five years ago, I used it as my daily tool to communicate actions to the team about their tasks for the day and week ahead. I'd put their initials in the box with the date it was to be done. They'd come back and "X" it out when it was done. Simple right?

But that wasn't all. I spent a lot of time maintaining the board and transferring data back and forth to other stakeholders. I had a spreadsheet running in the background I'd update and email out to the leasing team, I sent the owners updates as well, and finally I'd go into Yardi and update the unit status there as well.

There are other short comings:

👉 You have to be in front of the board to use it, no remote updates
🤔 Limited information. If it doesn't fit in the grid it doesn't fit. Have a renovation going with extra steps you might be out of luck
😮‍💨 Manual writing was repetitive and time consuming.

The years have passed and technology has dramatically advanced with new tools and solutions. But these boards are still out there. They cost about $200 for the one I showed.

Soo... If you're still pro board, what keeps you from making a change?

For those that have made the switch, what have you moved to? What's still missing?