How To Create A Kanban Board In Excel?

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Kanban Boards have become a widely used tool for managing workflow and visually representing the progress of work. Excel spreadsheets can provide really helpful ways to help you organize all of your vital notes, highlight the major objectives of your projects, and manage crucial details. They can also assist you in keeping track of the stage of the task or process you are involved in.

This article will show you how to create a Kanban Board in Excel with ease.

Although this tool first gained popularity as a visual management tool used in industrial organizations, it may also be a useful tool for personal usage if you need a little assistance with managing your tasks.

Just to be clear right away, Kanban boards function best as a visual management tool. They don’t have the name “board” by accident! However, if all you need is something tool or software-based, you can make a Kanban board in Excel by following these straightforward instructions.

Table of Contents:

• What is a Kanban Board?
• Steps To Create A Kanban Board In Excel
• Kanban Board In Excel Template
• Summary
• Frequently Asked Questions

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What is a Kanban Board?

The project teams can apply agile tactics thanks to the Kanban workflow management technique. The greatest benefit of implementing Kanban is that it enables the promotion of work transparency through process and workflow visibility. Additionally, it is appropriate for all workflows and sectors. The Kanban board may provide you with a complete picture of the workflow and help you and your team become more productive.

These boards give Project Managers (PM), who frequently utilize Kanban, a configurable foundation to work from, saving them a ton of time and serving as an inspiration for process organizing. Furthermore, templates created on more thorough Kanban platforms enable cross-board communication and automation, resulting in even greater efficiency.

Steps To Create A Kanban Board In Excel

The Kanban outlines four steps to create a Kanban board in Excel: identifying items or tasks, selecting cards, putting cards on the board, and moving cards. The next steps are deciding when to pull or move cards and click them to board.

The primary goal of Kanban is to limit what people must accomplish and the amount of time they must spend on a task. The tasks or cards are related to the organization’s purpose and are set before the Kanban board is used.

Step 1: Prepare your Excel Workbook

The creation of an excel workbook is the first step. To do that, you’ll need to create a new Excel file and set up the workbook. In the excel sheet, add two tabs or sheets. Then give each sheet or tab a name. You can refer to the first sheet as the “Kanban Board” and the second sheet as the “Kanban Cards.”

Step 2: Create Workflow Columns  

The next step after setting up the excel worksheet is to construct the workflow columns. There are primarily three steps to the workflow depicted on the Kanban boards. It has three sections: “To do,” “In progress,” and “Done.”

Create three sections on the Excel file’s Kanban board tab using the below-mentioned steps. Make sure to merge cells. check each segment has the same width and that there is enough room to put the Kanban cards as well.

• Create a set of three cells/sections where you want to create the cards.
• Go to the Home tab → Click on the drop-down Merge & Center → Choose Merge & Center → Type “To-Do” in the merged cell.

Note: To differentiate one column from the other it is recommended to add colors to your cells.

Step 3: Create Task Cards or Kanban Cards  

The next is to go to the Kanban cards tab on the excel sheet to start creating the Kanban cards. Three task cards should be made. Verify that the task cards are all the same width. Choose the colors you want to use to color the task cards.

How many fields you want to add to the Kanban cards must then be decided. You may include fields for the task title, description, time estimate, due date, and assignee, for example.

Make sure they have the same width (three Excel columns) as the workflow status sections on the “Kanban Board” tab. You can quickly paste the task cards onto your Kanban board through this method.

In the task cards used in this example, you will see that the selected cells are:

• three excel columns wide
• and ten excel rows in length

When all of the necessary cells have been chosen for a card, pick the option to “Merge Across,” as illustrated below.

Step 4: Name the Tasks and Cards

After you complete creating the cards, you now have to name the cards with a list of tasks.

You can name the cards based on the priorities.

In this example we are adding five fields namely:

• Task name
• Assignee
• Description
• Attachment
• Due Date

Step 5: Using the Kanban Board

You might be wondering at this point how to use the cards to achieve your goals. The cards just need to be filled out with the appropriate information and given a status.

1. Based on its priority (Low, Medium, High), choose the card style you require.

2. Use the CTRL+C key combination to copy the full selection once all of the card’s cells have been highlighted.

3. Every time you need to add a new assignment to the task board, edit the cards.

4. Simply use the CTRL+X key combination to move them from one status column to the next.

Note: Remember that you have to be careful with what information you cut and paste to avoid duplicating the cards.

You must know how to make Kanban boards in Excel by this point. Consider learning other Kanban-enabled project management software to choose the one that best fits your needs.

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Kanban Board In Excel Template

Here is a snap of my completed board. You can also get the free template by clicking the link below.

You may use text boxes instead of worksheet cells for the cards (and you can format them to be different colors), but worksheet cells are easier to manage (although your results may vary!).

Once the basic board is in place, I simply utilize Excel’s cut-and-paste functionality to rearrange the items.

Note: This guide is for creating a basic and simple Kanban template using excel.

Summary

In the world of software development, we often see tools like agile boards, Kanban boards, and task lists, because, to learn best practices, it is essential to set up your analysis method straight. This could be even the perfect strategy for project management.

Kanban is an agile study method for business improvement. This article is focused on learning how to Kanban board In Excel for project management to track work in progress.

For more information on project management software and methodologies read our blogs.

For courses on project management and tools please check our course list.

Frequently Asked Questions

Simon Calder

Chris “Simon” Calder was working as a Project Manager in IT for one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious cultural institutions, LACMA.He taught himself to use Microsoft Project from a giant textbook and hated every moment of it. Online learning was in its infancy then, but he spotted an opportunity and made an online MS Project course - the rest, as they say, is history!