Planning your work with the Kanban method

The Kanban board: columns, what goes on a card, WIP limits, spotting bottlenecks, Trello and other tools, personal and team Kanban, exercise.

Plenty of work, but no clear idea of where anything stands: a familiar situation in an office, a training centre and at home alike. Tasks are scattered across messenger chats, notebooks and memory, so something gets forgotten, something gets done twice by two people, and something sits “nearly finished” for weeks. Kanban is a method that solves this with a simple tool: all the work is visible on one board. In this guide we look at what Kanban is, how to set up a board, what to write on a card, why a WIP limit speeds work up, how to find the place where work gets stuck, which tools you can use, personal and team Kanban, short meetings and how Kanban differs from Scrum. Then we build a small team’s board step by step, go through common mistakes and finish with a practical exercise and a checklist.

What Kanban is and where it comes from

Kanban is a Japanese word meaning roughly “visual signal” or “card”. The idea was inspired by Toyota’s production system, where cards showed which part was needed on the factory floor, when and in what quantity, helping to avoid overproduction. The approach was later adapted for office work, software development and knowledge work in general.

In today’s sense, Kanban is a way of managing work through a visual board. The board is divided into columns, and each column stands for a stage of the work. Every task is a separate card, and as the work moves forward the card moves from left to right.

Kanban rests on three main ideas:

Make the work visible. Every task is on the board, with no “hidden” lists anywhere else.
Limit how much is in progress at once. Do not start lots of things at the same time; finish what you have started first.
Watch the flow and improve it. See where work stalls and gradually fix the process.

Kanban does not ask you to tear up the way you work now. You draw your current process on the board and then make small changes. That is why it is easy to start.

How a board is built: columns and adapting them

The simplest Kanban board has three columns:

To Do: tasks that have not been started yet.
In Progress: tasks being worked on right now.
Done: finished tasks.

For most people this is enough to begin with. As the process becomes more complex, more columns are added. For example:

Backlog: things that might be done in the future but have not been chosen yet. To Do is then kept for work that will definitely be done in the next few days.
Review: the work is ready, but a manager or colleague needs to look at it.
Waiting: the work depends on a reply from another person or organisation: a document, a permission, a payment confirmation and so on.

When adapting the columns, ask yourself one question: “Does the work really pass through this stage, and does seeing this stage help me?” If the answer is no, the column is unnecessary. For each column, also agree on a definition of done. For example, only work approved by the manager moves from “Review” to “Done”. Without such a rule, everyone understands the word “finished” in their own way.

What goes on a card: how to write a clear task

The card is the basic unit of the board. A badly written card (“Report”, “Hall”) tells nobody what needs doing. A good card contains:

A title that starts with a specific verb. Not “Report” but “Prepare the monthly attendance report”. Not “Hall” but “Book the hall at the mahalla guzar for the event”. The verb turns the card into an action.
An owner. Each card has one main person responsible. Two or three people may work on it together, but “everyone” in practice means “no one”.
A due date. If the work has a firm deadline, write it down. Some tasks have no deadline, and there is no need to give them an artificial one.
A checklist. Breaking a large task into small steps. For example, inside the card “Hold the parents’ meeting”: “agree the date”, “write the announcement”, “send it to the groups”, “prepare the room”.
Extra information (optional). A short note, a file or link that is needed, a colour label (for example “urgent” or “finance department”).

A simple rule on card size: if a task is too big to finish within a few days, split it into several cards. “Get ready for the new academic year” is not a card but a whole project. Its parts, such as “Draw up the class timetable” or “Allocate the rooms”, can be cards. Splitting larger work into stages is covered in detail in our article on project management basics.

WIP limits and flow: why starting less means finishing sooner

WIP stands for “work in progress”. A WIP limit caps how many cards can sit in one column at the same time. For example, a column labelled “In Progress (3)” should never hold more than three cards. To start a fourth task, you first have to finish one or move it on to the next stage.

At first glance this seems odd: surely starting lots of things at once is faster? In practice it is the other way round. The reasons:

Switching between tasks takes time. Every time you move from one task to another, you spend time and energy remembering where you left off. We also discussed this in our article on staying focused.
Half-finished work is of no use. Three sent letters are more useful than ten half-written ones.
Problems become visible quickly. When the limit is reached, the team is forced to ask: “Why isn’t work moving?”

How do you choose a limit? There is no exact formula. To start, try 2–3 for “In Progress” on a personal board, and roughly the number of people for a team. Watch it for two or three weeks: if people are often left with nothing to do, raise the limit; if tasks sit in the column for a long time, lower it.

Spotting a bottleneck

One of the biggest benefits of a board is that it shows where work gets stuck. This is called a bottleneck, after the narrow neck of a bottle. The signs:

Cards are piling up in one column while the next one is empty.
Some cards have been sitting in the same column for several days.
Everything is waiting in “Review”, but only one person does the checking.

In this situation the answer is usually not “work faster” but change the process: bring in a second person to review, chase up replies for the tasks in “Waiting”, or pause new work for a while and help out at the narrow point. Some teams write on each card the date it entered the column, so it is immediately clear which tasks have gone “stale”.

Physical boards and digital tools

A physical board

The simplest Kanban is a board on the wall, or a large sheet of paper and coloured sticky notes. You draw three columns with a marker and write each task on its own sticky note. The advantages: everyone can see it, no technology is needed, and moving a note by hand is satisfying. The drawbacks: remote staff cannot see it, notes can fall off, and no history is kept. A physical board suits a small team working in one room, or personal use, very well.

Digital tools

There are many programs for Kanban boards. They work on phones and computers, and everyone sees changes instantly. The menu names below follow the English interface and may differ slightly between versions.

Trello. Inside a board there are lists, which are your columns, and inside them cards. New column: “Add another list”; new card: “Add a card”. Open a card to add Members (owner), Dates (due date), a Checklist and Labels (colour label). Cards are moved by dragging with the mouse.
Notion. On a database page you choose the Board view, and cards are grouped by the Status property. Each card is a full page where you can add text, a checklist and files.
GitHub Projects. Handy for developers: choose the Board layout in a project, and the default columns are Todo, In Progress and Done. Cards are GitHub issues. The column menu lets you set a limit.
Microsoft Planner. For organisations that use Microsoft 365. Columns are called “buckets” here (“Add new bucket”), and a task has Assign (owner), Due date and a Checklist. Tasks can also be grouped by Progress.

A simple rule for choosing a tool: pick the environment your team already uses. If your organisation works in Microsoft 365, choose Planner; if you are a team of developers, GitHub Projects. What matters most is not the tool but the habit of updating the board every day.

Personal Kanban and team Kanban

Personal Kanban

Kanban is not only for work. A student, a homemaker or a freelancer can keep a board too. Take Dilnoza, a college student. Her board shows:

To Do: “Write up the physics lab report”, “Revise English vocabulary”, “Send the presentation slides to classmates”.
In Progress (limit 2): “Write the second chapter of the coursework”.
Done: “Borrow the book from the library”.

It works the same way at home: “Get the children’s school uniforms ready”, “Check the utility bills”, “Draw up the guest list for the celebration”. Ways to divide your time and plan your day are covered in our article on time management, and Kanban combines well with them.

Team Kanban

In a team, the board becomes a shared agreement: who is doing what, what is waiting and what is finished are visible to everyone. This needs a few rules:

Everyone moves and updates their own cards.
Even if a new task is given verbally or in a messenger, it goes on the board.
The whole team agrees the columns and WIP limits together.
The board is a tool for help, not for control. Using it to blame staff encourages people to hide the real situation.

The culture of working together is covered in detail in our article on teamwork.

The daily meeting, the weekly review and how Kanban differs from Scrum

A short daily meeting

Many teams hold a 10–15 minute meeting at the board every morning. Rather than each person giving a long report, the board is reviewed from right to left, starting with the tasks closest to completion:

What is nearly finished, and what is getting in its way?
Which card has been stuck in one place for a long time?
Who needs help?

If a problem needs a deeper discussion, deal with it separately after the meeting with the people involved.

The weekly review

Set aside 30–45 minutes once a week:

Look through the “Done” column: what was completed? Then archive or clear it.
Put “To Do” and “Backlog” in order: the most important tasks for next week go to the top.
Talk about the process: where did we get stuck, is the WIP limit right, should a column be added or removed?

How it differs from Scrum

Scrum is another popular agile method. The main differences in brief:

Time. In Scrum, work is divided into fixed periods (sprints), usually one to four weeks long. Kanban is a continuous flow: as soon as a card is finished, the next one is picked up.
Roles. Scrum has dedicated roles (Product Owner, Scrum Master). Kanban does not require any new positions.
Limits. Scrum limits the amount of work taken into a sprint, whereas Kanban limits the number of tasks at each stage (the WIP limit).

There is no single answer to which is better. Scrum may suit a development team whose work is planned in advance. For administrative staff, a support service or event organisers, whose tasks arrive unexpectedly every day, Kanban is often simpler.

Example: a training centre’s admin board

This example is hypothetical and the names are made up. Three people run the administration of a small district training centre: the head, Bahodir, the administrator, Feruza, and the methodologist, Sardor. Tasks are handed out in a Telegram group and are often forgotten. They set up a board in Trello.

Step 1. Collect all the work. In 20 minutes, all three write down every task they are carrying in their heads: “Prepare the announcement for the new group”, “Set the day for handing out certificates to parents”, “Arrange the projector repair”, “Draw up the autumn class timetable” and others.

Step 2. Choose the columns. They start with four columns: To Do, In Progress, Waiting, Done. “Waiting” is needed because many tasks depend on a reply from a repairer or another organisation.

Step 3. Write the cards properly. Every card starts with a verb and has one owner and, where needed, a due date. Sardor owns the card “Draw up the autumn class timetable”, which contains a checklist: “agree times with the teachers”, “allocate the rooms”, “send the timetable to the groups”.

Step 4. The WIP limit. “In Progress” gets a limit of 4: roughly one task per person plus one spare. Trello does not have this setting by default, so they write the limit in the column name: “In Progress (4)”.

Step 5. The daily routine. Every day at 9:00 there is a 10-minute meeting at the board (on screen). If a new task arrives in Telegram, whoever receives it turns it into a card straight away.

Step 6. The first weekly review. On Friday they notice that five cards have piled up in “Waiting”, three of which have been there for over a week. The bottleneck: nobody is following up external replies. The fix: every afternoon Feruza looks through the “Waiting” column and phones whoever needs chasing.

Step 7. Adjusting. In the second week it turns out that Bahodir needs to check many of the tasks, so a “Review” column is added. Three weeks on, the team says that “what happened with this?” questions in Telegram have become noticeably rarer.

The same structure works for a mahalla event too: a board for preparing a Navruz festival, for instance, would have cards such as “Get permission for the stage”, “Arrange the sound system”, “Draw up the programme of competitions for young people”.

Common mistakes, an exercise and a checklist

Common mistakes

Too many columns. Nobody keeps a twelve-column board up to date. Start with 3–5 columns and add more only when a real need appears.
A board that is not updated. If the board does not reflect reality, people stop trusting it and go back to the messenger. That is why the short daily review matters.
Everything in “In Progress”. If dozens of cards are “in progress”, nothing really is. Set a WIP limit and stick to it.
Vague cards. “Hall”, “Report”, “With Sardor”. A title like that does not say what to do. Start with a verb.
Cards without an owner. A task with no owner never gets started.
One giant card. A huge task that sits in one place for weeks does not show the flow. Split it up.
Never clearing “Done”. Hundreds of finished cards clutter the board. Archive them once a week.

Practical exercise

Try out what you have learnt over one week. Choose an area where you genuinely need it: your studies, housework or tasks at work.

Choose paper and sticky notes or a digital tool such as Trello, Notion or Planner.
Create To Do, In Progress and Done columns.
In 15 minutes, write every task you are carrying in your head on a separate card.
Start each card title with a verb and split large tasks.
Add due dates and checklists to the important cards.
Set a limit of 2 or 3 on “In Progress”.
For one week, spend 5 minutes every morning updating the board.
At the end of the week, review: what got stuck, is the limit right, should a column be added or removed?

Checklist for your board

All current tasks are on the board, with no hidden lists elsewhere.
There are 3–5 columns, each with a clear definition of done.
Every card starts with a verb and has one owner.
“In Progress” has a WIP limit, and it is being respected.
The reason is known for cards that have stayed in one place for a long time.
The board is updated daily and “Done” is cleared once a week.

Kanban is not a complicated theory but a habit of making work visible and starting fewer things at once. Work with a board for a week or two and you will begin to see which tasks are really slowing you down.

If you would like to learn to organise projects and teamwork systematically with a teacher, take a look at our association’s free project management programme and other training programmes. When you are ready, submit an application and our specialists will get in touch.