Building a Task or Kanban Board | Column Design and WIP Limits

You built a kanban board, and now cards are piling up on the left while the same ones have sat in the middle column for weeks. The cause is not the tool but the column design and how many things you run at once. This article covers the design needed to keep a board moving.

Columns Represent the State of the Work

The first thing to settle is what a column represents.

A common mistake is making columns out of people or departments. Create columns named after individuals or teams and the cards stop moving, because the owner does not change as the work progresses.

A column shows what state the work is in: not started, in progress, awaiting review, done. Keep the owner as an attribute of the card.

Use at Most Five Columns

Finer divisions feel closer to reality, but the opposite holds.

More columns mean moving each card more often. A design where one piece of work passes through three columns eventually stops being updated at all.

Five is the guide. Past that, check whether you are dividing by state or by process step. If the columns are process steps, that belongs in a schedule chart rather than a kanban board.

Should waiting be a column?

Whether to make "awaiting review" a column or an attribute of the card is a common question.

The test is whether things get stuck there. If reviews sitting for days is a problem, make it a column and make it visible. If they clear quickly, it does not need one.

Setting the WIP Limit

A WIP limit is the maximum number of cards allowed in a column. It is the idea at the centre of kanban.

Without a ceiling, people keep starting new work. In-progress cards accumulate, and nothing finishes.

The starting number

For the in-progress column, start at roughly 1.5 times the headcount. Six cards for a team of four.

Not matching the headcount exactly is deliberate, because waiting happens. When someone is blocked on a review or a client's reply, they need room to move to something else.

How to tune it

Judge by how often you hit the limit.

If you hit it daily and work stalls, either the limit is too tight or there is a problem upstream. If you never hit it, the limit is not doing anything.

Hitting it once or twice a week is about the right level.

Define Done for Each Column

When people apply different standards for moving a card right, the board loses credibility.

Write one line under each column stating what qualifies a card to move on.

• In progress → awaiting review: the first draft is complete and self-checked
• Awaiting review → done: the requester has confirmed there are no issues

Without this, cards get sent back after already reaching the done column.

Handling Stalled Cards

Every board produces cards that stop moving.

What matters is being able to spot them. If your tool records the date a card entered its column, you can see how long it has been sitting.

Setting a limit on days-in-column narrows what needs discussing in the standing meeting — for instance, only cards that have not moved in a week.

Separate the reasons

What to do depends on why it is stuck.

• No capacity because of other work → revisit the WIP limit
• Waiting on someone else → create a dedicated waiting column
• No longer needs doing → take it off the board

Many teams neglect the third. Leaving behind things you have decided not to do makes the whole board look heavier than reality.

When to Split the Board

Put everything on one board and it eventually becomes painful to look at.

The test for splitting is whether the same columns work. Production work and advertising operations have different states. Put them on one board and the columns will not fit one of them.

Split too far, though, and the overall picture disappears. Keep the boards one person checks daily to three at most.

How Boards Stop Working

Even with the design right, boards stall in operation.

The common case is cards that are too large. If one card represents a month of work, it sits in the same column for weeks and there is no point looking at the board.

Break work down so one card finishes in a few days. If a card does not move right even once a week, that is the signal to revisit the size.

Frequently Asked Questions

We cannot stick to the WIP limit

When you hit the limit, the intended response is to help move a stuck card rather than start something new. Failing to stick to it means either the limit is too tight or too much is coming in from upstream.

Do WIP limits help an individual?

Sometimes more than for a team. Deciding to run at most two things at once noticeably reduces half-finished work.

How do we handle urgent requests?

One approach is a single urgent slot. While that slot is occupied, no further urgent request is accepted. This prevents everything becoming urgent.

When do we clear completed cards?

Archiving once a week is practical. Clear them immediately and no sense of progress remains; leave them and the done column swells until it is hard to read.

What a Board Cannot Show

A kanban board is good at showing what is stuck where right now. What it cannot express is what that work cost and what it produced.

Xtrategy manages campaign schedules alongside budget and KPIs on a single screen. Keeping day-to-day work on a board and campaign-level money and results in a separate layer does not create duplicate entry.

Summary

• Columns represent the state of the work, not people or departments.
• Five columns at most. More and the cards stop being moved.
• Start the WIP limit at roughly 1.5 times the headcount.
• Hitting the limit once or twice a week is the right level.
• Write what qualifies a card to move on, for every column.
• Break cards down to a size that finishes in a few days.

When a board stops moving, start by revisiting the column names. If they divide by people or process steps rather than by the state of the work, that is the cause.