Welcome to this tutorial on understanding Kanban. Imagine trying to bake a cake without a clear recipe or knowing what step comes next. It’d be easy to mix up or forget ingredients, right? Kanban boards solve this exact kind of problem in project development: they keep everyone aware of what needs doing, what’s in progress, and what’s finished, so no step gets lost or confused.
By the end of this reading, you should feel comfortable with:
At its simplest, a Kanban board is a set of tasks (sometimes called “cards”) displayed on a board. Think of each card like a sticky note that describes a piece of work that needs to get done. When you complete a task, you move the sticky note to the next phase, showing its progress.
Each card may have a list of requirements or items to fulfill before it’s considered complete. For instance, imagine a task “Get all Spots” in an API project:
### Get all Spots
Returns all the spots.
- [ ] Seed data exists in the database for spots to be returned.
- [ ] Successful response includes each spot in the database.
- [ ] Spot data returned includes the `id`, `ownerId`, `address`, `city`,
`state`, `country`, `lat`, `lng`, `name`, `description`, `price`,
`createdAt`, `updatedAt`, and `previewImage`
Once each requirement is checked off, the card can move to a “done” state or whichever pipeline indicates completion.
The real power of Kanban shines when you set up multiple pipelines. Think of pipelines like labeled columns: Backlog, Next Tasks, In Progress, In Review, and Accepted. Each card travels from column to column as the task evolves. This visual approach helps everyone instantly see how tasks flow through each phase of development.
Kanban keeps the entire project transparent and organized. Imagine cooking in a busy restaurant kitchen. Each chef can see what dishes are on order, which ones are being cooked, and which ones are plated, ensuring that nothing is forgotten or duplicated.
On software teams, a Kanban board offers similar benefits:
Even if you’re flying solo on a project, a Kanban board prevents you from feeling overwhelmed. Instead of juggling tasks in your head, you lay them out physically (or virtually), freeing your brain to focus on actually solving problems.
You might hear Kanban and Scrum mentioned in the same breath. They’re related, but not the same:
But rather than clashing, they often work together. Scrum focuses on time-boxed sprints, while Kanban boards help track the day-to-day flow within each sprint. You might have a scrum “backlog” that feeds into your Kanban “To Do” column, with the rest of the board reflecting ongoing tasks and completed work.
In your project, you’ll likely create a Kanban board during sprint planning, with each user story or technical task represented as a card. Day by day, as you move them through the columns, it informs your standup discussions: “What did I finish? What’s in progress? Do I have any blockers?”
Consider a small startup building a food delivery app. They have tasks like “Build Menu UI,” “Implement Payment,” “Set Up Database,” and so forth. The team places these on a Kanban board:
Developers push tasks through these columns, updating statuses. Managers see that “Implement Payment” is stuck in “In Review.” Maybe the QA team found a bug or the lead developer is waiting for approval. Thanks to Kanban, the manager can help resolve the bottleneck quickly, keeping the project flowing smoothly.
Kanban is a visual way to organize tasks in columns that represent each phase of work. It keeps the entire team aligned, offers transparency into progress, and helps identify blockers early. Even if you’re working solo, a Kanban board reduces the chaos of remembering what needs to be done and in what order.
Combining Kanban with Scrum can give you the best of both worlds: structured sprints and a clear day-to-day workflow visualization. Whether you’re tackling a small side project or working on a large team, Kanban boards can keep you efficient and on track.