Kanban Flow: How to Structure it Effectively

Kanban is a project management methodology that helps to visualize your workflow, control the project process, and reach the best results.

A Kanban board comprises columns, swimlanes, cards, and limits. This helps manage work processes, eliminate waste, and deliver results faster.

This article will provide a thorough understanding of Kanban flow, including its definition, benefits, and best practices for using the board.

What Is Kanban Flow?

In project management, flow describes how an item or a piece of work moves through the business process. Kanban is used to visualize that workflow and show how an item moves through the individual process steps.

This is done with the help of Kanban boards. The most basic of which holds three columns or statuses – planned, in progress, and completed. Each team can choose to expand them with additional statuses and sub-statuses if their project or workflow requires that change.

Here is a simple example of how that may look.

In this example, each column represents a step in the workflow, and tasks move from left to right as they progress. This simple visualization helps the team quickly see what’s planned, what’s actively being worked on, and what has been completed. Once the flow is visible, the next step is to manage it effectively, and that’s where WIP limits come in.

Kanban uses WIP (Work In Progress) limits to control the flow of tasks. These limits are usually applied to the priority and in-progress columns on the board. By restricting the number of tasks a team member can work on at the same time, WIP limits help to maintain focus. According to Kanban principles, multitasking is inefficient and can disrupt the smooth flow of work.

Having such limits also helps the team to spot the bottlenecks early and help solve them. Instead of taking on a new task, the started tasks have to be finished first. So, if you spot a task sitting in the in-progress status for no reason, this is a very clear indication of a possible issue.

Lastly, a very important aspect of having a good Kanban flow is ensuring the planned items are prioritized and reviewed regularly. Usually, the team pulls from the planned status individually and they will do so based on task priorities. Thus, it is important to review the backlog and prioritize items so that the important work gets done first.

Explore the fundamentals of Kanban, its principles, and crucial tools such as project visualization, WIP limits, and feedback loops within the Ultimate Kanban Project Management Guide.

A Simple Kanban Flow

The easiest way to measure Kanban flow is to rely on the most basic 3-column structure common to most Kanban board tools:

• Backlog: All new ideas and work items that are waiting to be worked on. 
• Work In Progress: All tasks are currently being worked on. 
• Done: All completed tasks. 

Of course, this is just the start – a primer for how Kanban works. In practice, most Kanban boards end up containing a lot more detail than this. Let’s now look at the three key metrics most often used to measure workflow in Kanban.

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Kanban Flow Metrics

The best way to measure workflow using Kanban is to focus on these three key metrics: cycle time, throughput, work in progress.

Cycle time is the average actual time it takes for the team to complete an item from the time they started working on it, measured from the start of the first task to the end of the last task. The key word here is “actual,” which is different from the expected time spent working on the item. 

Throughput refers to the rate at which a company produces or processes its products or services. Regarding projects, it is typically used to reference the number of units passing through a process in a specific period, usually hours, days, or weeks.

You would typically measure this in terms of the number of cards that pass through your Kanban board during a specific timeframe, the life of a project, or over the course of a week. 

Work in progress section on the Kanban board lists all work currently undertaken by the team but not yet completed. It is important to limit work in progress to avoid multi-tasking, duplication, error, and lack of focus, all of which can impede productivity. 

You can read more on these and other key metrics in this post: Kanban Estimation – Tools and Best Practices

However, you can measure your Kanban flow efficiency by combining the three metrics above into a cumulative flow diagram (CFD) also known as a Kanban flow diagram or Kanban flow chart. 

How to Read a Cumulative Flow Diagram

The CFD tracks the number of work items in your Kanban board’s ‘In Progress’ columns each day. The horizontal axis represents the period for which the chart is visualizing data. The vertical axis shows the total number of cards in the workflow at various points in time.

A Kanban process flow chart typically includes the following stages:

• Defined: The process begins with identifying and defining work items or tasks. This stage involves capturing and clarifying the requirements and scope of the work.
• Accepted: Once a work item has been defined and approved, it moves to the “Accepted” column. This indicates that the team or relevant stakeholders have acknowledged it and is ready to be worked on.
• In Progress: The work items that are actively being worked on are moved to the “In Progress” column. This stage represents tasks that are currently being executed or developed.
• Completed: When a work item is finished, it is moved to the “Completed” column. This signifies that the task has been fully executed or developed according to the defined requirements.
• Deployed: A work item may progress to the “Deployed” column if applicable. This stage indicates that the completed task has been released or deployed to its intended environment or system.

The differently colored bands on the chart show the various stages of your workflow as they appear on the Kanban board. These bands will go up or sideways depending on the number of tasks in your process.

Using this Kanban process flow chart, you can see at a glance how long your tasks’ approximate cycle time is. The distance between the lines on the chart will show you where your problems lie. 

If your colored bands are progressing in parallel, this means that your throughput is stable. New tasks are entering at a good rate – the same rate that tasks are being completed. 

If one of the colored bands is rapidly narrowing, this shows that your throughput is higher than the rate at which new tasks are entering your process. You might have overcapacity and need to reassign resources to optimize them. 

If one or more of your colored bands are widening rapidly, new cards are entering your process faster than you can work on them effectively. Your efficiency is lower than possible, and you may need to review your WIP limits. 

Similarly, you could use the ‘New vs Completed tasks’ diagram in the Teamhood Agile metrics report.

Structuring Kanban Board Flow Effectively 

You now know that you can measure your Kanban board flow by keeping it on top of your cumulative flow diagram. You know when your flow is ineffective, so what can you do when that happens?

It’s important to remember that this will depend slightly on the type of project you’re using Kanban boards for.

Using Kanban to Structure Marketing

1. Planned Work

Use the Planned column for upcoming content pieces. To keep things clear, divide this column into two sections:

• New Ideas – fresh concepts that haven’t been validated yet.
• Committed Ideas – items that the team has agreed to move forward with.

2. Priorities

Add a Priority column for high-urgency or time-sensitive tasks. This helps the team quickly identify what needs immediate attention.

3. Work in Progress

Split the In Progress column into detailed sub-stages so you can track content through the production lifecycle:

• Research
• Writing
• Reviewing
• Editing
• Design
• Final Review

This breakdown makes it easier to see where work might get stuck.

4. Campaign Execution

Create an In Campaign column to track content that has moved beyond production and is actively being used in live campaigns.

5. Completed

Finally, use a Done column to capture completed initiatives. This provides visibility into finished work and helps measure progress over time.

Looking for the best tool to implement this? Check out the comparison of KanbanFlow vs Trello vs Teamhood.

Using Kanban to Structure Software Development

Here it makes sense to make each product feature a separate card. As well as the usual To-Do, In-Progress, and Done columns add a Backlog column ahead of To-Do. That way, you’ll also be able to track your backlog tasks. 

This is just a taste of using Kanban boards to structure your workflow effectively. For more practical Kanban board examples, check out this post.

Ready to Start Using the Kanban Flow Methodology?

Knowing how best to use Kanban to improve your workflow is vital for success. Hopefully, this blog has given you a useful introduction to how to start thinking about Kanban flow and Kanban efficiency. That way, you should now be able to visualize how Kanban could be useful in helping to manage your workflow effectively.

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