How To Structure The Best Kanban Flow For Your Specific Needs

Kanban boards are incredibly simple. You move the little cards from To Do to Doing to Done, right? That’s all there is to it. It’s certainly the only way to use a kanban board!

You already know that’s not accurate. Yet so many teams that could benefit deeply from a different kanban flow default to the same three-stage process, again and again. It may even be staunching your productivity.

Today we’ll be exploring some better ways to structure your kanban flow, and seeing why they work.

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Use Your Kanban Flow to Support Your Goals

When you pull back from thinking of a kanban as nothing more than a checklist of “stuff to get done” you can start thinking tactically. Your kanban flow may be an important part of reaching your broader goals with minimal additional effort.

Consider a few high-level goals you might have:

Better backlog management – You frequently lose control of your backlog. Could you create a flow that mitigates the crush of unsorted backlog items?

Improving documentation – Your process is locked up in your teams’ heads, and there’s very little recorded documentation of fixes. Maybe a different kanban flow could encourage more documentation.

Iterating and updating issues – You want to get better over time, but it’s hard to remember what you’ve covered already. A better kanban flow might enable you to track this more efficiently.

Setting goals helps turn “chore” items (like setting up a kanban board) into high-level tactical moves that you can justify and explain to your team and stakeholders.

Look Into Additional Steps That Matter

Now that you know your big-picture goals, find out how your workflow can be tweaked to make those goals easier to achieve.

Let’s revisit those big goals from the last section.

Better backlog management 

Rather than letting your kanban “To Do” section become a project backlog graveyard, consider adding some other steps to keep things more organized.

Here’s a peek at a basic kanban arrangement in Visor.

You might want to add an “On Hold” option for tasks that cannot be done yet, and are waiting on a go-ahead. Or a “Blocked” option for tasks that are actively being blocked by an identifiable problem. You might even create an “Out of Scope” or “Nice-To-Have” option available for backlog items that are low-priority, but could be a good project for someone with spare time.

Additionally, rather than simply making completed tasks as “Done” consider an archive section for anything older than one or two weeks.

Improving documentation

If you’re falling short of where you’d like to be with documentation, the culprit is usually not being able to make the time for it. So incorporate documentation into your workflow itself.

This is an example of a more detailed kanban in Visor.

Add a section for documentation prior to a task counting as completed. This encourages team members to slow down and create time for documenting their process or fixes before forgetting about a task.

This also saves items from clogging up an “In Progress” kanban stage, since you’ll know the work is done but the documentation isn’t.

Updating and checking

When you’re producing at a high volume, bugs, errors, typos, and other small mistakes can slide through so easily. While you’ll probably never get rid of code reviews and compliance checks as concrete tasks, you can incorporate an additional check in your workflow by adding in a review stage.

Perhaps moving an item to this stage can even notify or count as another team member’s task if you’re using an editorial system, and when that’s the case it’s obvious at a glance who needs to work on what.

If completed items are getting lost, take inspiration from Visor’s kanban flow. We have two separate final steps – “Completed” and “Acknowledged.” When another team member assigns me a task, I’ll move it to “Completed” when I’m done. But this doesn’t clear the task yet! It won’t clear until the original assigner moves it to “Acknowledged” to note that they know the task is done. It’s minimal additional lift but keeps work from falling through the cracks.

Consider How Lightweight Your Kanban Flow Could Be

All that being said, there’s no reason to add stages for the sake of adding stages. Doing so can risk creating a bloated kanban flow weighed down by unnecessary steps that only serve to confuse your team.

Maybe a to-do list, more or less, works for you. Perhaps all you need is one or two additional steps. There’s no one right or wrong answer. It’s about finding a balance where you’ve made the overall job easier rather than harder.

Whenever you add a new stage to your kanban flow, pay attention to what you and your team do with it. Make sure that you’re actually using it rather than skipping over it or, worse, avoiding using the board altogether.

Kanban Flows Can Empower Your Team to Work Better

Creating the right flow for the way you and your team operate can have a huge positive impact on your productivity and process compliance.

So the next time you start thinking of your to do list as a three-part system, consider opening your mind to alternatives. You’ll be glad you did.

Looking for a better kanban board? Try Visor, free, today.

Halden Pfearsen

Halden Pfearsen

Senior Writer

Halden Pfearsen is the head writer at Visor, bringing you the best of the best in PM strategy, news, and tools. She's been in the SaaS startup space since 2016, and has loved every second. Other things she loves include guitar, camping, and tabletop games.

Find more of Halden's published work, presentations, and awards right here.

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