Kanban is one of the easiest ways to visualize work, and that is why so many teams fall in love with it once they try it. At its core, Kanban is all about flow. Instead of worrying about what will be finished by a certain date, the team focuses on how work is moving through different stages. You can think of it like watching traffic. You want cars to move smoothly from one part of the road to another. When something gets stuck, you notice the jam right away. Kanban gives teams that same awareness, letting everyone see where work is flowing well and where it is getting blocked.
In a typical Kanban setup, work begins in a simple stage like To Do. When someone starts working on it, the task moves into In Progress. Once the work is finished, it goes into Done. That simple left-to-right movement is the heart of Kanban. Teams can add more detail if they want, such as stages for reviewing, final testing or design work. Instead of trying to push work through a deadline driven cycle, Kanban encourages teams to keep work moving one piece at a time.
Jira makes Kanban incredibly easy to use. When you create a Kanban board in Jira, you get a clean, visual layout showing your workflow as columns. Every issue on your board sits in one of these columns. As soon as the status of the issue changes, you drag it to the next column. Jira updates everything automatically. This simple visual board helps everyone understand what the team is working on and what needs attention. If one column starts collecting too much work, the team knows that part of the process needs help.
Customizing the board is one of the best parts of Kanban in Jira. Adding columns is simple and helps make your board match the way your team actually works. You can open the board settings, go to the section for columns and add as many new stages as your workflow requires. Some teams add a column called Design. Others add one called Ready for QA or Waiting on Review. Once the column is created, Jira lets you map your workflow statuses to it so everything stays in sync. This flexibility means your Kanban board always reflects the real stages your work moves through.
Scrum teams often discover that Kanban ideas make their sprints smoother and more predictable. Even though Scrum focuses on completing a set amount of work inside a sprint, it does not always show how well that work is flowing during the sprint. Kanban fills that gap. When you combine Scrum and Kanban, you can plan in sprints but still watch how work moves day to day. It becomes easier to spot when too many tasks are being started at the same time or when tasks are piling up waiting for review. This helps reduce the amount of unfinished work that carries over into the next sprint.
Kanban also helps Scrum teams deal with bottlenecks. If testing gets overloaded, it will show on the board. If design slows down development because assets are late, the board shows that too. Instead of guessing during daily standups, the team can look directly at the board and see where the flow is breaking. This leads to better conversations and faster decisions.
Another reason Scrum teams use Kanban is that it helps people stay focused. By limiting how much work the team can have in progress at once, Kanban encourages everyone to finish what they started before taking on something new. This stops the constant juggling that slows teams down and creates stress. When work flows smoothly, the team becomes more predictable, and sprint goals become easier to achieve.
Kanban is simple enough for beginners and powerful enough for advanced teams. Jira brings that simplicity to life with clear boards, customizable workflows and easy drag-and-drop issue movement. Whether your team works entirely in Kanban or blends it with Scrum, the result is the same. You get more visibility, more control and a healthier flow of work that keeps your project moving in the right direction.
Cameron McKenzie is an AWS Certified AI Practitioner,Machine Learning Engineer,Solutions Architect and author of many popular books in the software development and Cloud Computing space. His growing YouTube channel has well over 30,000 subscribers.
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