Kanban Framework Template
Manage your workflow in a highly flexible and visual way with the Kanban Framework template. Optimize processes and improve your team’s efficiency.
Trusted by 65M+ users and leading companies
About the Kanban Board Template
The Kanban method was created in the 1950s by Toyota Automotive employee Taiichi Ohno as a simple planning system to optimize production stages to keep up with American manufacturing (the gold standard at the time). However, it wasn’t until 2004 that David J. Anderson used the concept and applied it to IT and software. Now the Kanban framework is one of the most popular methodologies within Agile and LEAN.
What is the Kanban method?
Kanban is a popular method of LEAN workflow management valued for its real-time visualization of work capacity and full transparency of the work being done.
It consists of a timeline with tasks placed as cards, where you can see the task status, track progress, and address any bottlenecks or impediments.
When to use a Kanban board
Teams use Kanban boards to monitor the progress of work from start to finish. It’s a powerful way to display progress to yourself and cross-functional partners so that the behind-the-scenes nature of software development becomes visible. This Kanban template can be used to manage workflows and provide transparency across all stages of a project.
Benefits of using the Kanban method
Based on just-in-time manufacturing principles, Kanban helps your team reduce waste, anticipate bottlenecks and other issues, and collaborate on fixing them together.
The beauty (and power) of the Kanban method is that it’s a visual way to improve an organization's processes and can be used by anyone across any function.
Create your own Kanban board
Making your own Kanban board is easy with Miro’s ready-to-use template, the perfect canvas to create and share. Get started by selecting the Kanban template, then take the following steps to customize it according to your organization's needs.
1. Customize your Kanban board
You can label rows and columns according to your needs. David Anderson’s original method established that Kanban boards are divided into these:
visual signals
columns
work-in-progress limits
commitment point
delivery point
Some teams prefer to simplify these labels to only backlog, in progress, and done.
2. Add task cards
Start populating your Kanban board by adding Jira cards for each task or deliverable. Add tags or assign each Kanban card to an owner, and ask your team to write all backlog or in-progress projects in the appropriate column.
3. Get to work!
As steps are completed, make sure you move each card through your workflow so you can see your work pipeline from beginning to end. Be sure to check and update your Kanban board regularly so everyone can see the most up-to-date status of your tasks.
What columns should a Kanban board have?
A typical Kanban board has three columns: backlog, in progress, and done. Depending on your team’s needs, you can also add more swimlanes to have cross-functional teams collaborating all on one board.
Get started with this template right now.
Feature Planning Template
Works best for:
Desk Research, Agile Methodology, Product Management
Features are what make a product or service fun, but adding new ones is no walk in the park. It takes many steps—ideating, designing, refining, building, testing, launching, and promoting—and just as many stakeholders. Feature Planning lets you put a smooth, sturdy process in place, so you can add a feature successfully, and spend less time and resources doing it. That makes our Feature Planning Template a smart starting point for anyone looking to add new product features, especially members of product, engineering, marketing, and sales teams.
Mind Map Template
Works best for:
Planning, Mind Mapping, Education
We see you, visual learners. You grasp concepts and understand data easier when they're presented in well-organized, memorable graphics. Mind mapping is perfect for you. This powerful brainstorming tool presents concepts or ideas as a tree — with the central subject as the trunk and your many ideas and subtopics as the branches. This template is a fast, effective way for you to start mind mapping, which can help you and your team become more creative, remember more, and solve problems more effectively.
Design Research Template
Works best for:
UX Design, Design Thinking, Desk Research
A design research map is a grid framework showing the relationship between two key intersections in research methodologies: mindset and approach. Design research maps encourage your team or clients to develop new business strategies using generative design thinking. Originally designed by academic Liz Sanders, the framework is meant to resolve confusion or overlap between research and design methods. Whether your team is in problem-solving or problem space definition mode, using a research design template can help you consider the collective value of many unrelated practices.
Executive Summary Template
Works best for:
Leadership, Project Management, Documentation
Pique their curiosity. Get them excited. Inspire them to keep reading, diving further into your proposal details. That’s what a good executive summary has the power to do—and why it’s a crucial opening statement for business plans, project plans, investment proposals, and more. Use this template to create an executive summary that starts building belief, by answering high-level questions that include: What is your project? What are the goals? How will you bring your skills and resources to the project? And who can expect to benefit?
User Story Map Template
Works best for:
Marketing, Desk Research, Mapping
Popularized by Jeff Patton in 2005, the user story mapping technique is an agile way to manage product backlogs. Whether you’re working alone or with a product team, you can leverage user story mapping to plan product releases. User story maps help teams stay focused on the business value and release features that customers care about. The framework helps to get a shared understanding for the cross-functional team of what needs to be done to satisfy customers' needs.
Work Breakdown Structure Template
Works best for:
Project Management, Mapping, Workflows
A work breakdown is a project management tool that lays out everything you must accomplish to complete a project. It organizes these tasks into multiple levels and displays each element graphically. Creating a work breakdown is a deliverable-based approach, meaning you’ll end up with a detailed project plan of the deliverables you must create to finish the job. Create a Work Breakdown Structure when you need to deconstruct your team's work into smaller, well-defined elements to make it more manageable.