Kanban Board

How to Use a Kanban Board

The word Kanban literally means "signboard" in Japanese. The process of implementing a Kanban board is to break tasks down into logical categorical steps - commonly referred to as workflow. The workflow of the Kanban board typically has three categorical steps:

1. A queue, representing work to be started
2. An in-progress step, representing work that is currently in-progress towards completion
3. A completed step, representing work that has been completed

Each categorical step, including the queue, is limited in the number of work items assigned determined by the team or workflow manager. Work, represented as a card within the step, is added into the queue step, pulled in-progress and then moved to the final step upon completion.

To properly introduce Kanban boards, you need to know what your development workflow generally looks like you will typically want some visual way of communicating the workflow to the team.

Using SmartDraw Kanban Boards

SmartDraw offers a simple Kanban Board that works like sticky notes on an electronic whiteboard.

Step 1. Start with a Kanban board template.

Step 2. Determine your workflow columns.

Step 3. Add cards for tasks and pull them to the appropriate columns when needed.

What are the 3 Elements of Kanban?

Every Kanban board has three basic elements: a board where tasks are organized, columns that represent the status in the workflow, and cards that represent the tasks. You can have different Kanban boards for each team or department. If you're part of a Scrum team, your board may actually be a Scrum board that represents a specific Sprint.

Kanban Boards in Real Time

The very purpose of a Kanban board is to help distill project management to its essence. This means meetings can also keep to high-level points instead of getting lost in the details. As you review the board as a team, it's important that adding and moving notes on your board is quick and easy. You don't want to waste time manually lining up or moving notes. SmartDraw's Kanban board makes formatting automatic. When you add sticky notes using action buttons, SmartDraw's board will automatically expand to make room and the notes are aligned with the existing notes on the board. Moving notes from one column to another is just as easy. Just drag and drop and the board will automatically adjust to make room.