People don’t make good listeners.
This is why, if you’re trying to get your point across to sleepy, listless, and caffeinated coworkers first thing on Monday morning, you’ll have a lot more luck with visual aids.
In a hurry? Take a look at some of our favorite Kanban tools to improve workflows:
| Product Backlog Template | ✅ Prioritize product development tasks | Product Backlog |
| Team Iteration | 🚀 Focus your efforts on swift execution | Team Iteration |
| Kanban View Roadmap | 🪜 Have a clear overview of your development efforts | Roadmap |
| Project Assessments | 👍🏻 Offers teams transparency, flexibility, and easy scalability | Assessments |
| Kanban Framework Template | 🏆 Manage your workflow in a highly flexible and visual way | Framework |
We’re just wired to be visual, which explains the popularity of Kanban tools for managing projects. Kanban software can help you visually create and deconstruct your project roadmaps, tasks, and processes to maximize your efficiency and productivity and build agile teams.
Organizations that employ PM techniques are 28% more likely to meet their target business objectives. Share on X
In this article, we will cover the best Kanban tools you can use to streamline your workflows.
But first, if you’re only just dipping your toes into the complex and overwhelming world of project management tools and techniques, here is a quick overview of Kanban tools and why you should consider using them.
What are Kanban Tools?
The Kanban method is used to visualize your workflow, but not just at a big-picture level. You can drill up or down to see how the workflows function from A-Z at an individual, supervisory, and managerial level.
Kanban tools help you do more than just see your projects at a granular level, though. They’re used as lean, but full-fledged project management software for project planning, workflow automation, task lists, setting up dashboards, managing/prioritizing tasks and subtasks, assigning team members, tracking progress and milestones, setting deadlines, online collaboration, and so much more.
Kanban tools can be used by anyone and any type of organization, regardless of the following:
- The stage of business you’re at (startup, small business, enterprise/large business)
- Your specific industry (retail, B2B, SaaS, shipping, automotive, creative, and so on)
- The business area of interest (Human Resources, Operations, Management, Finance, and Accounts, etc.)
- Your management role (team leader, manager, CEO)
Because they’re a great all-in-one solution, Kanban tools can also replace multiple systems, so you just have one system or “Kanban board” to work with. You’ll increase productivity at work and save on costs by cutting out unnecessary software when one will do the job just fine.
Benefits of Using Kanban Tools
Kanban tools have a lot of benefits to offer for discerning business owners, project managers, team collaborators, and regular users who want to get more organized and simply, get more done in less time.
❇️ Benefit 1: Visual Insights
- One of the biggest no-brainer benefits of Kanban tools is the ability to gain visual insights and just as easily manage projects with a visual perspective. Using a visual project management tool just helps you understand, process, identify, sift/sort, plan, share, and organize faster and more efficiently.
❇️ Benefit 2: Increased transparency
- Using a Kanban board is a lot like posting sticky notes on a white or blackboard. You can invite team members to collaborate and view progress on Kanban boards, which means greater transparency, leading to trust and better teamwork. You can easily identify key stakeholders and task dependencies, share progress updates, brainstorm solutions to bottlenecks as a team, and get notified of important updates.
❇️ Benefit 3: Improved productivity and efficiency
- To start with, having a shared workspace that enables easy collaboration is a great way to boost employee productivity. Because it’s a visual system, it’s easier for all stakeholders to work with tasks, assign stakeholders, identify backlogs and roadblocks, and track progress. Kanban tools are a great way to focus team effort on the essentials and allocate resources in a more efficient way to drive the results that matter.
❇️ Benefit 4: Optimal usage of budget and minimization of waste
- The usage of Kanban boards is considered a lean method of project management. You can see at a glance whether team members are being utilized optimally or if they’re being over or under-burdened. You also get to identify challenges and preempt further problems down the line, so you plan your existing resources to minimize waste and maximize productivity.
12 Best Kanban Tools & Templates For Teams
Ready to get more productive? Let’s get started!
1 Intuitive Kanban Software
Intuitive Kanban Software is a popular team collaboration software that helps businesses develop, customize, and scale the tools and processes that work best for them. With Intuitive Kanban Software, you can easily plan and manage workflows, centralize team communications, and stay updated with notifications.
🎖 Why we like this Kanban board: The user-friendly Intuitive Kanban software makes it easy for you to organize all your workflows in one place, just the way you like it. With the notifications feature, you’ll never miss a deadline. We love the ready-made and customizable templates for creating team projects, weekly tasks, and to-do lists that make it a breeze to create workflows from the ground up!
2 Kanban View Roadmap
The aptly-titled Kanban View Roadmap literally serves up an engaging and interactive Kanban-style view of your product development roadmap. You can use this customizable template to manage both tasks and targets, set priorities, and create a clear visual representation of your project.
🎖 Why we like this Kanban board: Kanban View Roadmap is a beginner-friendly product development Kanban tool, which simply means it’s easy to set up and use. We particularly liked the add-ons for the template in the form of five color-coded status updates, eight custom fields, and seven view types, including a getting started guide.
3 Product Backlog Template
Miro’s Product Backlog Template is great for storing team ideas, planning epics (a large mass of work that can be broken down into smaller stories or “issues”), prioritization, and management of tasks. The template makes it easy to quickly construct product backlogs, so it’s often used for agile and sprint planning.
🎖 Why we like this Kanban board: Where do we start? Product/software development teams often have many tasks up in the air, and it can become increasingly challenging to keep eyes on the ball. Use this template to convert spreadsheets to sticky notes, comb large backlogs using keywords, and even important Jira cards and organize them too!
4 Project Assessments
The Project Assessments Template offers you and your teams transparency, flexibility, and easy scalability. Use forms to bring all internal and external requests under one umbrella, make data-driven decisions, and effortlessly collaborate with external stakeholders.
🎖 Why we like this Kanban board: The Project Assessments tool is a no-brainer if you like having options. There are more than 30 columns you can use to build your workflows, and a comprehensive range of view types, including Kanban board view, calendar view, timeline, Gantt charts, map, and more. Plus, instant automation and integrations with Google Calendar (sync due dates) and Dropbox (share important files)!
5 Kanban for Software Development
This Kanban tool, as the name suggests, is designed keeping the needs of software developers in mind. Plugged as a “visual workflow management tool,” the Kanban for Software Development helps software teams streamline their workspace and processes, improving efficiency, productivity, and team collaboration.
🎖 Why we like this Kanban board: Project managers can use this template to streamline incoming requests, set WIP limits, and track cycle time. Included with the template are seven statuses, four custom fields, two tags, four view types, and a single automation (“when status changes, change list”).
6 Trello
Trello is a web-based Kanban-style visual project and task management tool. Nave has an excellent in-depth resource that tells you exactly how to get started with the Kanban methodology using Trello boards. Alternatively, software development teams can use the Kanban Development Board available on the Trello website.
🎖 Why we like this Kanban board: The Kanban Development Board has a lot of great features that make it a very useful project management tool for software teams. We especially liked the ability to set Work In Progress limits (WIPs) because it’s hugely motivating to keep things moving.
You also have the ability to power up by integrating apps like GitHub, Forms, and Reports by Blue Cat and Corrello’s Kanban Agile, Scrum, and Kanban dashboards and charts on the premium version of Trello.
7 Kanban Template (Intermediate)
This Kanban tool keeps it nice and simple, although the template is best served for intermediate users. The immediate use case is being able to customize swimlane columns and quickly optimize your release cycle.
🎖 Why we like this Kanban board: The Kanban Intermediate is one of the more simple and fuss-free Kanban board tools on this list, but most ideal for users with some experience working with Kanban methodology.
8 Team Iteration
With Team Iteration, you can easily set up a single priority backlog to focus your efforts on swift execution. Use the committed plan board to identify stages of progress on the backlog and fix bottlenecks. Make use of Kanban metrics, like Lead Time and Work in Progress (WIP), to track progress and performance.
🎖 Why we like this Kanban board: What we liked most about Team Iteration is that we could set up customizable automation literally in minutes. So, you can trigger emails to go out when you hit due dates and obtain real-time notifications whenever tasks are completed.
9 Kanban Framework Template
The Kanban Framework Template is a great introduction to the Kanban system. To get started, create a Kanban board from the template and set up labeling for your rows and columns.
You can assign basic labels like backlog, in progress, or done for smaller, less complex projects or if you’re working in small teams. Next, add Jira task cards, tag the task to team members for ownership, and finally, ask your team members to populate the column with their tasks and statuses, so that you can track projects.
🎖 Why we like this Kanban board: Complete newbies will find this Kanban board template a great way to initiate themselves into Kanban-style project management.
10 Agile Sprints
Agile Sprints has a lot of Kanban features that make it ideal for creating custom project management workflows. Use this tool to assign accountabilities, monitor progress with timeline and Gantt chart views, build high-level overviews, and manage spending with intuitive dashboards. You can also integrate this template with Jira, GitHub, Slack, Todoist, Microsoft Teams, Excel, and Slack.
🎖 Why we like this Kanban board: Agile Sprints makes it easy to flip between simple and complex custom workflow development. We also like the availability of over 30 column types, including due dates and status columns, adding to the overall visibility and transparency.
11 Action Plan Template
The Action Plan Template means business. Having a goal is just one-half of the equation. You need an action plan to formulate a list of tasks, prioritize them, set deadlines, and see them through to the finish line. The Action Plan Template is your aid to doing just that.
🎖 Why we like this Kanban board: The Action Plan Template is designed for doers. With this template, there’s simply no excuse for getting started. We also liked the option to include SCHEMES, i.e. identifying whether you have enough Space, Cash, Helpers, Equipment, Materials, Expertise, and Systems to successfully execute your plan.
12 Asana
Asana’s Kanban software is an agile project management software that hits all the right notes. Easily plot workflows, tag assignees, drag-and-drop task cards, identify roadblocks and backlogs, toggle between different view types, and set rules or triggers for automation (not available on the free plan).
🎖 Why we like this Kanban board: We particularly liked the ability to automate routine task management on Asana’s premium plan. So, we can, for example, set triggers to move the task cards from one column to another or move tasks when a certain stage is reached to another team member.
People Also Ask These Questions About Kanban Tools
Q: What is the best way to use Kanban tools?
- A: The best way to use a Kanban tool depends on the nature of your project and what you hope to achieve with it. A Kanban tool can be used for any type of project, from software development to marketing campaigns, but it is most popularly used in agile methodology. In an agile environment, teams can use a Kanban board to visualize and manage their workflows by breaking down their tasks into smaller, manageable pieces. This allows them to easily identify bottlenecks and issues in the workflow, as well as prioritize tasks more effectively.
Q: What features should I look for in a Kanban tool?
- A: When selecting a Kanban tool, it is important to look for features that will enable you to easily visualize and manage your workflow. To do this, the tool should include features such as swim lanes, which allow you to sort tasks into categories based on their priority and status; task cards, which provide an easy way to add new tasks and update existing ones; deadlines and alerts, which notify team members when tasks are due; and integrations with other tools, such as project management systems. Furthermore, if you are working with a remote team, it is important to select a tool that provides secure data storage and allows for collaboration in real time.
Q: How does a Kanban tool work?
- A: Kanban tools are digital tools that allow users to visualize and manage their workflows. They use a board-like interface, where tasks are represented by cards that can be moved from one column to the next as they progress through various stages of completion. Each column on the board represents a stage of completion, such as “To Do,” “In Progress,” or “Completed.” Additionally, some Kanban tools allow users to add comments to cards and set deadlines, making collaboration easier.
Q: How does a Kanban tool differ from other project management tools?
- A: While Kanban tools are used to manage projects, they differ from other project management tools in terms of their focus on workflow visualization and task prioritization. Traditional project management tools often involve long lists of tasks with no visual representation of progress or understanding of how each task fits into the bigger picture. Additionally, these tools tend to be focused solely on the completion of tasks, whereas a Kanban tool can be used to identify potential issues in the workflow, allowing for quicker problem-solving.
Q: What are some tips for getting the most out of a free Kanban tool?
- A: There are a few tips that can help you get the most out of a free Kanban tool. First, make sure to assign tasks to specific team members and set deadlines for each task. This will ensure that everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goals. Additionally, make sure to keep your boards uncluttered by archiving tasks that are completed or no longer relevant. Finally, use the swim lanes to group tasks based on their priority and status. This will make it easier to identify bottlenecks and prioritize tasks in your workflow.
