How to Set Up a Kanban Board

A practical, step-by-step guide to set up a kanban board. Kanban is the concept behind it — here is how to do it in practice.

For the full concept, see Kanban.

Steps

1. Map your current workflow into columns on a board — visualise every stage.
2. Put existing work onto the board as cards so the real state is visible.
3. Set WIP limits per column to cap how much is in flight at once.
4. Manage flow: watch for cards piling up (bottlenecks) and address them.
5. Measure lead and cycle time, and improve the process incrementally.