Tools I Use: Kanban Board
Formally speaking, a Kanban board is a project management tool. It's roots date back to post-WWII Japan where Taiichi Ohno, an industrial engineer working at Toyota, develop a system for tracking and implementing production improvements. The system, "Kanban" (meaning "signboard"), uses a collection of organized cards to track workflows. It has since been adapted to a wide variety of industries. I learned how to use Kanban boards for software development and continue to use them for just about any medium or long term project - home maintenance and improvements, writing projects, software projects, and health issues.
The building blocks of a Kanban board are the individual cards used to capture the tasks that need to be completed on the way to reaching a goal. There is a bit of art involved with determining the level of detail needed on the card. There needs to be just enough to capture the task but not so much that the card turns into multiple pages of detailed descriptions. The rule of thumb is that the task should be describable in one or two sentences - something that fits on an index card. Any more than that and it's probable the task is either too big or not well defined.
There is essentially no learning curve to mastering Kanban and it can be set up anywhere a user can organize task cards. My favorite configuration uses a blank whiteboard and sticky notes. The simplest Kanban board has three columns:
To Do: Tasks that need to be done.
In Progress: Tasks currently being worked on.
Done: Completed tasks.
The columns match the workflow required by the project. There can be additional columns that capture the additional stages in the workflow. My software projects, for example, have "Backlog" and "Blocked" columns so I can organize future work, visualize dependencies, and manage obstacles to completing current work-in-progress.
There is a lot more to how to work with a Kanban board, but the basics described here are all that is really needed to leverage the organizing power behind the Kanban process.
"Tools I Use - Kanban Board" last updated on 2025.08.05.
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