Glossary
What is a Kanban board? Structure and columns
A Kanban board shows work as cards in columns that map the path from open to done. Structure, sensible columns and the most common mistakes.
A Kanban board is the visible form of a working process: columns stand for the stations a task passes through, cards for the tasks themselves. A card moves left to right, and its position answers — without anyone having to ask — what is being worked on and what is stuck.
Which columns make sense
Columns should map your actual process, not a textbook. Three to five is enough for most teams: something like Backlog, In progress, Review, Done. Every extra column is a claim that a real handover happens there — and if it does not, it only lengthens cycle time.
The most common mistakes
The first is a board with no cap: without a WIP limit everything piles into the middle column, and the board reliably displays that too much is running at once without anyone changing it. The second is a „waiting on the client“ column that becomes permanent storage. The third is one board per person instead of per workflow — at which point nothing stuck between people is visible any more.
Board, backlog and sprint
The board shows what is running. What has not started belongs in the backlog. Teams working in fixed iterations pull a sprint out of it — the board stays the same, it just fills in portions.
In Zuuna
You create columns freely and reorder them by dragging; the same cards can also be viewed as a table, a calendar or a document without maintaining them twice. Teams that want the flow automated let cards move themselves by rule or by git commit.
FAQ
How many cards belong on a board?
As few as possible in progress at once. There is no cap on the total — but once a board becomes unreadable, that usually means two workflows are sharing one board.
Does every team need its own board?
A board should map a workflow, not a group of people. If two teams share the same process, one shared board is usually more honest than two separate ones.
What belongs in the Done column?
Only what is genuinely finished — and what that means is set by the definition of done. Without that agreement, "done" means something different to every person.