Kanban board

A Kanban Board can be a powerful tool. Its origins come from Lean principles, and are designed to visualise your workflow. At its heart, it is a visual representation of your process, typically using columns to represent different stages of work (like; "To Do," "In Progress," "Waiting for Review," and "Done"). Cards represent individual work items or tasks. The core idea is to see where everything stands at a glance. 

You might hear talk of "visual boards" or "task boards," and while a Kanban Board is certainly both of those, it has some crucial distinctions.

What makes a Kanban Board a 'real' Kanban Board is the application of those principles. The most important one is limiting Work In Progress (WIP). This means you deliberately put a cap on how many items can be in a particular column at any one time. This is not just a suggestion; it is a fundamental rule that helps prevent bottlenecks, encourages collaboration, and ensures work is finished before too much new work is started. It focuses on flow. Other principles include explicitly outlining the policies for moving work, much like definitions of done, but for columns, continually improving the process, and managing the flow of work items through the system. 

So, while a sticky-note covered whiteboard might be a visual board or even a simple task board, it only becomes a Kanban Board when you start applying those specific principles, particularly the WIP limits, to truly optimise your workflow. It is about actively managing the flow and spotting where things get stuck, helping teams deliver value more smoothly.

A Kanban Board is a simple visual tool that helps you manage work as it moves through different stages of a process. It helps you divide and visualize work into columns such as “To Do,” “In Progress,” “Done”, etc.

Each piece of work is written on a card. As work progresses, the card moves from one column to the next. It helps every stakeholder see what needs to be done, what’s in progress, and what’s finished at a single glance.

By making work visible and limiting how much is “In Progress” at any time, it helps teams stay focused, avoid overload, and think more clearly about how work is actually getting done.