How to create a custom board in Kanban Zone

Jack Wallen shows you how easy it is to create a custom Kanban board with Kanban Zone.

Kanban Zone has quickly become one of my favorite Kanban options on the market. Not only does it offer a beautiful, easy-to-use interface, but it’s also highly customizable such that you can make it work for just about any type of project.

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One of the best features of Kanban Zone is that you can easily create new boards from templates and then customize them to perfectly meet the needs of your project. I’m going to show you how to do just that.

What you’ll need to create a custom Kanban Zone board

The only thing you’ll need to follow along with this tutorial is a valid Kanban Zone account. You can start with the 30-day free trial to make sure this product fits your project needs, as the trial includes every feature found on the platform.

How to create a new board with Kanban Zone

The first thing we’ll do is create a new board. Once it’s created, we’ll customize it.

To create a new board, click on the drop-down in the upper left corner and then click Add Board (Figure A).

Figure A

In the resulting page (Figure B), give the new board a name.

Figure B

After naming your board, click Next in the upper right corner.

In the next window (Figure C), you’ll want to select a template on which the new board will be based. You can choose from popular templates, methodologies, portfolios, personal and solution-based templates.

Figure C

Once you’ve selected your template, click Next.

Finally, you can create custom card labels for the board (Figure D).

Figure D

Click Finish and your board is ready.

How to customize your new board

It took me a bit of poking around to figure this out, but you can easily customize the board by renaming the columns to better match your project. To do this, click the gear icon and then click Board Designer from the drop-down. In the resulting window (Figure E), the board designer allows you to take care of a few important aspects.

Figure E

The first thing you’ll want to do is expand each column and rename each (Figure F).

Figure F

Give the column its new name and then customize the WIP Limits, the Column Width and type anything you need in the Explicit Agreements. Some WIP Limits columns, such as Backlog only, have a Minimum, whereas other columns have a Minimum and a Maximum. Some columns also include sub-columns.

You can add as many sub-columns as you need, but if a column section doesn’t have a sub-column already, you can’t add one yourself. For instance, the Backlog column doesn’t allow for sub-columns. You can add new columns by clicking +.

Once you’ve completed the customization, click Done Editing and your customized Kanban board is ready to be used.

And that’s all there is to it. With Kanban Zone you can create some pretty spectacular boards that will serve just about any project. Enjoy that incredible flexibility.

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