What is Kanban? The simple but effective way to manage tasks

List every task that needs to be completed from beginning to end - or go ahead and put them straight onto your Kanban cards. Each card should have one task written on it, though some online cards give you the option to add subtasks or checklists under the main task, too.

A common convention for this is also a simple one: ‘To Do’, ‘In Progress’, ‘Completed’. You will be placing your cards into and between each of these sections on the board.

Though all of your tasks will be in your To Do section (or another name you’ve decided to go with), that doesn’t stop you from prioritising them. Use colours or labels to clearly show which tasks should be focused on first. This will help your workflow by making sure that tasks that the completion of other tasks depend on get done.

It might sound counter-intuitive, but reducing how many tasks are being worked on helps boost productivity by reducing multi-tasking and burnout.

Kanban encourages collaboration, with tasks on the board up for grabs by any member of the team. If you’re comfortable, try completing a task outside of your usual work realm, or help another member of your team to complete their task.

Because tasks aren’t assigned to any particular person, it’s important to be clear about whether someone is already working on a task. Make sure to show somewhere on the card that somebody has claimed the task.

A Kanban board will have several columns to represent different steps in your workflow. For instance, a simple board might have the following steps:

From here, you need to add your tasks to your Kanban board. Each task needs its own card and should have a title, description, assignee, and a due date (if it’s applicable). Add them to the relevant column.

Don’t forget to add tasks to your Backlog column! These are tasks that are yet to start but will be coming up soon. This helps you get on with work quicker by already having tasks ready to go.

Finally, start moving your tasks through the Kanban board. If a task is in To Do and you start it, put its card in In Progress. If anything comes up that stops your progress, you can move it to Stuck. Finally, when the task is done, move the card to Complete.

Though you can create physical Kanban boards and cards by hand using paper and a pen, the easiest way to share your tasks is using an app. Here are three handy apps:

Trello is the simplest and easiest Kanban app to use. Whether you’re tackling tasks solo or working as a team, you can scale your board (and your workspace - which holds boards for each individual project) to your needs.

What makes it particularly powerful is what you can do with your cards. It’s possible to colour code, tag users, add checklists, and even add time-frames to keep projects on track.

While not completely Kanban-based, Confluence is a powerful collaboration platform. The software pulls project management, documentation, and note-taking together in one handy place, making it one of the best knowledge management tools around.

A highly customisable collaboration tool with List, Calendar, and Kanban board views to boot, ClickUp is perfect for bigger teams and businesses.