What is a Kanban board?

A list shows what needs doing. A board shows how work is flowing, which is a different and often more useful question. When every task is a card in a column, you can see in a second that eight things are in progress and nothing has shipped this week, or that the Review column is where everything gets stuck. That visibility is why Kanban spread from factory floors to software teams and then to personal task management.

The method rests on three ideas. Visualize the work so that status is never a matter of asking around. Limit work in progress so that starting a new card requires finishing an old one, which cuts context switching and exposes bottlenecks instead of hiding them. Manage flow by watching how long cards take to cross the board and fixing the slow stages.

For individuals, a board is a lightweight alternative to elaborate systems. Three columns and a rule of no more than three cards in progress will keep most people honest about how much they are juggling. It combines well with a waiting-for list as its own column, and with a Gantt chart when dates and dependencies matter more than stage.

A board is quick to set up and easy to over-engineer. Keep the first version small:

• Map your real stages. Start with To do, In progress and Done. Add a column only when work actually pauses at a distinct stage, such as Waiting or Review.
• One card per task, one sentence per card. A card should name a concrete outcome. Break anything larger than a day or two into subtasks.
• Set a WIP limit for In progress. Two or three for a person, a small multiple of team size for a team. Write it on the column.
• Pull, don’t push. Move a card into a column only when there is room; otherwise finish something first.
• Order columns by priority. The top card in To do is the next one to pull, so keep that column sorted.
• Walk the board daily. A two-minute pass from right to left, finishing what is closest to done before touching new cards.
• Review the flow weekly. Note which columns fill up and which cards sit for days, and adjust limits or stages accordingly.

Cards that are waiting on someone else belong in their own column so they do not count against your WIP limit; see the waiting-for list. If your work is date-driven, pair the board with timeboxing so that cards also have an end.

Kanban is one of Fluidwave’s four task views, alongside Table, Card and Gantt, and you can switch between them with Alt plus a number. Columns are the task statuses: Draft, Waiting, Delegate, Pending, Do, In progress, Completed and Canceled. Drag a card between columns to change its status, and the change syncs in real time to every device and can be undone with Cmd+Z. Cards show linked contacts, and a board can be grouped by list, project, schedule, context, goal, category, assignee or complexity.

The status model gives a few columns extra behavior. Waiting is typed, waiting on a call, an email, a message or something else, and the Active filter hides those cards until they are yours again. Delegate sends a card to a human assistant through the marketplace, which is in public beta. Within a column, auto-prioritization keeps cards in a sensible order using criteria you rank, so the top card is the next one to pull.

If you collaborate in Slack, a Fluidwave list can be synced to a native Slack List in Board layout, with tasks posted as cards in a channel; details are on the Slack integration page. For dependency chains and dates, the Gantt view shows the same tasks as a timeline. Coming from a board-first tool? See Trello alternatives.