A Guide To Create a Kanban Board in Jira

The most challenging part of starting a new project is often associated with the task management involved. You’ll have to outline everything you need to do and devise a system to record which are finished and which are not. This gets even more complicated when you include quality assurance or review processes.

That’s why several tools have been developed to address this problem, such as checklists, flowcharts, and Kanban boards. If you use Jira, chances are you are involved in some level of task management. If so, follow this article to learn how to use Jira for Kanban boards.

What Is Kanban?

If you’re a task or project manager, you’ve most likely chanced upon Kanban boards. These diagrams usually include three columns, “To-Do,” “Doing,” and “Done.” Of course, other columns like “Reviewing” can be added as long as it serves the team's purpose.

History of Kanban

Kanban boards were developed by Toyota in the 1940s. It was primarily used to streamline the complicated manufacturing processes of cars. It only took some time before Kanban boards became implemented in other fields of work.

In terms of etymology, “Kanban” is a romanized version of the Japanese word for “card” or “visual signal.” So, “Kanban boards” means “a board of cards.” Kanban boards include, by default, three “cards” labeled as the ones mentioned above. Some features of Kanban boards include:

Limiting work in progress (WIP). When there’s a lot to do, employees may get overwhelmed and try to start each task simultaneously. However, this often leads to lower quality of work or procrastination because of the surmounting number of tasks. With Kanban boards, you can set priorities properly.
Centralized task board. Are you familiar with those “quest boards” in RPGs or shows? Kanban boards can serve team members in the same way. Team members can glance at the board and take on tasks that are still pending or contribute to those in progress.
Adaptability. A big feature of Kanban boards is that they’re easily editable and don’t necessarily conform to one form. Since each “card” is technically just a list, it’s easier to adjust work priorities and put less critical tasks on the back burner.

Of course, you can acquire the benefits of Kanban boards in Jira. Read through the following section to learn more about this!

5 Easy Steps To Make a Kanban Board in Jira

Before learning the steps to create Jira Kanban boards, you must familiarize yourselves with Jira. You might know Jira as a project management software application used by teams and organizations worldwide. At the onset, though, it’s marketed as a “software development” tool.

Jira focuses on providing visual organization solutions to different teams with different needs. As a task management software, it offers various visual tools, including the Kanban board. So, if you want to use Kanban boards for your following projects and you’re subscribed to Jira, this section is definitely for you.

Other features you can enjoy in Jira and its Kanban boards are real-time collaboration, comments and mentions, reporting and analytics, and editing permissions. So, there’s a comprehensive set of features that you can also use to level up your Kanban board experience in Jira. You’ll go through those in the next section.

How To Create Kanban Boards in Jira

For now, here are the required (essential) steps to create Kanban boards in Jira. Of course, there will be more steps necessary to create more complex operations, but here are the basics:

Step 1

Go to Projects Create project.

Step 2

Go to Software development > Kanban.

Step 3

On this page, click Use template.

Step 4

Choose whether you want a team- or company-managed project. Read through the differences as provided by Jira. Then, follow the remaining prompts.

Step 5

You’ll now have your Kanban board. Click + Create issue on the proper column, type the task name, and click Create to create tasks.

You now know how to create Kanban boards on Jira. As you may have noticed, most steps include setting up the Kanban board. However, once it’s finished, you can edit the Kanban board as you please – no complicated steps are required.

You don’t need to be an expert to know how Kanban boards work. Its straightforwardness is one of its major selling points as a visual diagram.

Tips for Using the Kanban Board in Jira

As mentioned earlier, there are many more ways that you can enjoy your Kanban boards in Jira. As an all-in-one task management tool, it offers many features to elevate the experience of using these boards. So, if you want to learn more about these features, here are some tips:

Use color coding. While Kanban boards are pretty easy to understand, using color-coding or other labeling features can be a great way to guide the eyes of your team members. This makes the board more efficient, especially in a color-coded system.
Automation rules. One amazing feature of Jira is its automation rules. These can be set for repetitive actions, like automatically sending finished “In progress” tasks to the “Done” column and sending a notification to the project manager.
Edit permissions. The permissions feature in Jira limits which team members can edit the Kanban boards or add new tasks. A great way to use this is only allowing team members to “check” finished tasks while the managers can add or remove tasks.
WIP limiter. Jira can also automatically limit works in progress in your Kanban boards. If it reaches a certain quota, no tasks can be added, and they will be placed on a different board or column. This is a great way to avoid overworking or overloading tasks.

How to Make and Use A Kanban Board Easier

Although Jira is undeniably a great project management tool, it may not be for everyone. After all, a quick look at the Jira interface can be overwhelming for the average user. If you want to use Kanban boards but do not necessarily need the comprehensive Jira feature set, give Wondershare EdrawMind a try.

Wondershare EdrawMind is mainly a mind-mapping and diagramming tool that’s also improved by a dedicated Kanban board feature. It’s more professional because it offers a deeper set of features to personalize your Kanban boards.

Furthermore, it’s simpler because its interface is clean, unlike Jira, where you deal with too many features and integrations. The simplicity of EdrawMind can be appealing, especially since it also offers other functions like real-time collaboration.

To create Kanban boards in EdrawMind, follow the steps below: