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Kanban board

Work in progress by state, with WIP limits and blocked cards visible.

1 kanban board example

Marketing team board

A snapshot of a marketing team's work in progress, with one column over its limit.

A board is a census, not a flow: no arrows anywhere. The In progress column shows 4/3 in the accent because it is over its WIP limit, and the blocked card carries the same accent so both problems read at once.

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What is a kanban board?

A kanban board visualizes work as cards moving through columns that represent stages, such as To do, In progress, Review and Done. The method comes from Toyota's production system and was adapted to knowledge work by David J. Anderson.

Read it left to right: the further right a card is, the closer it is to done. Work-in-progress (WIP) limits on each column cap how many cards it can hold, and blocked cards are flagged so the team swarms on them.

When to use a kanban board

  • Use it for continuous work with changing priorities, such as a marketing or support team's queue.
  • Use it to show where work piles up: a column that is always full is your bottleneck.
  • If you need dates, durations and dependencies for a fixed-scope project, a Gantt chart serves that better.

How to make a good kanban board

  1. Model the columns on how work really flows today, not on an ideal process.
  2. Write a WIP limit in each active column header and show when it is exceeded.
  3. Keep card titles short and outcome-based, with owner and a blocked flag visible on the card.
  4. Split Done from Review or Deployed if those steps regularly hold work back.