How a kanban board works
- Columns are the stages of the workflow. Three is the minimum; most teams add stages such as Ready, Review or Blocked.
- Cards are the work items: an action, a maintenance job, a quality investigation, a feature. Each card carries the owner, due date and anything needed to do the work.
- WIP limits cap how many cards may sit in a column. When a column is full, the team finishes work before starting more, which is what makes the board a pull system rather than a to-do list.
- Flow is measured: how long a card takes from start to finish (lead time) and how many finish per week (throughput).
Kanban board versus kanban cards
In manufacturing, kanban originally meant the card or container that signals a process to produce or deliver more. The kanban board is the knowledge-work adaptation, popularised in software, that applies the same pull logic to tasks. Both limit work in progress and make the state of work visible.
Setting one up
- Map the stages the work actually goes through.
- Put every current item on the board as a card; the pile in To Do is usually the first lesson.
- Set a WIP limit per column, starting at the number of people who work in it.
- Review the board daily and move cards only when the work is really done.
- When a column keeps filling, that is the bottleneck: fix the stage, not the board.
Kanban boards and daily management
Tier boards and kanban boards do different jobs. The tier board shows measures against target and the actions they generate; a kanban board shows the flow of those actions, or of improvement projects, through their stages. Many teams keep both: the action list on the tier board is reviewed as a kanban.