What is The Kanban Planner?

What Is The Kanban Planner?

If you are tackling large projects or creating an Agile roadmap, the only way to work through it is by taking it one step at a time. However, getting started can seem challenging when you have so much on your plate.

To solve this, you need a tool that lets you plan, visualize, and work through tasks without needing to switch back and forth.

The Kanban planner is a visual framework that breaks down workflows into clear phases. This layout helps teams stay focused on the project-critical tasks that matter and ensures that the project stays on track.

In short, the Kanban planner gives a holistic view of the project while creating a framework for tasks to move through a To Do, Doing, Done workflow. Let’s learn more about how the Kanban planner helps with task and project management.

What can you plan using a Kanban planner?

Starting from personal Kanban to Kanban for project teams, you can plan virtually anything using a Kanban planner.

Starting from a new marketing campaign, new product launch, agile sprint, or project delivery. Everything that can be described visually can go into your Kanban planner.

Here’s a sample bug tracking process using Kanban planning:

1. Identify the bug and add all relevant details such as version, description, criticality level, and screenshots.
2. Add project task format or a request form where each issue can have its own custom workflow.
3. Prioritize the bugs based on the team’s workload, urgency, and how critical it is for the project.
4. Adding it to the Kanban planner helps the team stay on the same page and you can track progress from backlog column to the done column. 
5. In case of any changes in the bug tracking process, the entire team will get notifications for any status changes.

Using a Kanban planner helps teams collate, monitor, resolve and report on issues and bugs throughout the development lifecycle process.

How does the Kanban planner work?

Here is how the Kanban planner works:

To start Kanban planning, set up your board accurately to reflect your desired criteria. There can be many criteria such as the time duration in weeks or months or by the person assigned where names of team members can be listed.

1. A vertical lane represents each criterion, and more than one criterion can exist.
2. Name the columns as ‘To Do, ‘Doing, or ‘Done’ or choose custom ones based on your needs.
3. Visualize the tasks and assign them to different columns.
4. Set up the limits for work-in-progress.
5. Monitor the workflow and proactively address disruptions.
6. Strive to improve all aspects of the team’s work continuously.

Kanban planner example

Think of the Kanban board as a big sheet of paper where you visually list your tasks and manage them. There are small Kanban cards (like post-its) within the board that can be moved into different columns.

Here’s a sample Kanban planner that can serve as an inspiration:

• To Do – Work items yet to be done are outlined in the To Do column
• Doing – All work-in-progress tasks are entered in the ‘Doing’ column
• Done – All completed tasks can listed here