This article will help you customize your kanban so it fits the specific needs of your project tracking.
Customize cards: access settings
The customization of your kanban cards is done from the administration of the Tracker on which the kanban is based. For example, to modify the cards of your bug kanban, you need to go to the administration of the bug tracker (you can access the administration either from the kanban or directly from the tracker itself, see the article on trackers).
Customize cards: edit the text preview
Customize cards: change the color
Customize columns
As previously mentioned, a kanban is based on a tracker. Any modification made to the tracker is reflected in the kanban, and vice versa. The same applies to the columns.
The columns of a kanban correspond to the values of the field used for the "Status" semantic in the tracker on which the kanban is based. Therefore, if you modify a value, the change will also be reflected in the tracker.
Similarly, if the kanban columns do not match the field you want, you can simply assign the "Status" semantic to another field.
Another important point is that only the values considered as open will correspond to columns.
Special case: "Backlog" and "Archive" columns
As you may have noticed, two columns cannot be modified: the "Backlog" column on the left and the "Archive" column on the right. The “Backlog” column contains all artifacts that have no value. For example, if the "Status" field value is "None", the artifact will appear in this column.
The “Archive” column contains all cards that have a value considered as not open. The value considered as not open is "Done". Therefore, when a card is moved to the Archive column, the value of the card’s and artifact’s "Status" field will automatically be updated to "Done."
Customize columns: card flow and WIP limit
Every team or tool has a maximum capacity for production or parallel processing. Just like a toll booth can only handle a finite number of cars per hour, a team also has its limits. Experience shows that for a given team or individual, there is a maximum number of tasks that can be executed in parallel. Beyond this limit, productivity does not just stagnate, it can even collapse dramatically.
Let’s take our toll booth example again: it can handle only 100 cars per hour. If you try to push 101 cars through in one hour, not only will 101 cars fail to pass, but it won’t even be 100, it will be significantly fewer. A traffic jam is created, and instead of a slight reduction in flow, the throughput drops sharply due to the congestion.
To prevent this drop in productivity, kanban allows you to configure WIP (Work In Progress) limits for each column.
If a user exceeds this limit, the column will change color to alert the user and other project members that the maximum allowed capacity has been exceeded.
Warning
Adding limits to columns also helps your teammates avoid the “99% done” effect, the dreaded situation for every project manager, where all tasks are in progress but none are actually finished.
This limit can only be modified by the project administrator.