Templates
Kanban board templates
Six free kanban board templates for six different kinds of work. Each one below is the real thing, not a picture of it — press "Use this template" and it opens as a live board you can edit immediately. There is no separate kanban board maker to learn and nothing to sign up for, and every column can be renamed or removed afterwards.
Template 1 of 6
Software Sprint
A developer or a small product team running a two-week cycle.
Backlog
3BRate limit the public API
Token bucket, 100 req/min per key.
Upgrade the test runner
Blocked until the CI image is rebuilt.
VWrite the migration guide
In Progress
2/2RFix session timeout on mobile
Reproduces on iOS Safari only.
BAdd pagination to the search endpoint
Review
1/3ARefactor the export queue
Needs a second pair of eyes on the retry logic.
Done
2GShip the changelog page
GDrop the legacy config parser
Why these columns
The three classic columns are not enough once work has to be reviewed. Code that is written but unreviewed is not done, and if it sits in "Doing" the column stops telling you anything. Splitting Review out makes the queue visible: when five things pile up in Review, the bottleneck is review capacity, not writing capacity.
Suggested WIP limit
Cap In Progress at 2 per person and Review at 3. Review is the column that silently grows, so it needs the tighter limit.
Template 2 of 6
Personal To-Do
One person, everything in one place, work and home together.
Backlog
3ARenew the car insurance
Book the dentist
Sort out the loft
Half a day, needs bin bags first.
This Week
2RReply to the landlord
Finish the quarterly expenses
Today
2/3Draft the project update
Two paragraphs, no more.
GWalk 30 minutes
Done
1GPay the electricity bill
Why these columns
A personal list fails when everything lives in one undifferentiated pile and the pile is always longer than the day. Splitting "This Week" from "Today" forces a decision once a week instead of forty times a day, and Today becomes a promise you can actually keep.
Suggested WIP limit
Three cards in Today. Not five. If a fourth is genuinely urgent, something has to move back — that trade is the whole point.
Template 3 of 6
Content Calendar
A writer, a newsletter, or anyone shipping words on a schedule.
Ideas
3VWhat a WIP limit actually does
Interview: how a solo founder plans a week
The case against daily standups
Outlining
1Three columns and when three is not enough
Lead with the failure mode.
Drafting
1/2BA week of personal kanban, logged
Editing
1/3AWhy your backlog keeps growing
Published
1GGetting started with a paper board
Why these columns
Writing has stages that look like progress but are not: an idea is not a draft, and a draft is not edited. A single "Writing" column hides which stage everything is stuck at. These five columns make the shape of the pipeline obvious — if Ideas is empty you have a supply problem, and if Editing is full you have a finishing problem.
Suggested WIP limit
Two in Drafting. Writing two pieces at once is already one too many, and three guarantees none of them ship.
Template 4 of 6
Job Search
Anyone running more than three applications at once.
Researching
2Mid-size fintech, remote-first
Check whether they publish salary bands.
Two agencies via the local meetup
Applied
2BBackend role — applied 12 Aug
BPlatform role — applied 18 Aug
Referred by a former colleague.
Interviewing
1/4ASecond round — systems design
Revise queueing and backpressure.
Offer
0- Nothing here yet
Closed
1RData role — withdrew, wrong stack
Why these columns
A job search is a pipeline with long, uneven waits, and the thing that goes wrong is losing track of who owes whom a reply. Columns by stage make the follow-up obvious: anything sitting in Applied for two weeks needs a nudge, and you can see it at a glance instead of rereading your inbox.
Suggested WIP limit
No hard limit on Applied — that column should be full. Cap Interviewing at 4, because past four you start preparing badly for all of them.
Template 5 of 6
House Move
A one-off project with a hard date and a hundred small tasks.
Six Weeks Out
3AGet three removal quotes
RGive notice on the current place
Check the notice period in the contract.
Start decluttering room by room
Two Weeks Out
3BRedirect post
Book the lift or parking permit
Confirm broadband install date
Usually the long pole. Book it early.
Moving Week
2Pack an essentials box
Kettle, chargers, bedding, toilet roll.
RTake meter readings
Done
1GNotify the bank and the council
Why these columns
A move is not a list, it is three lists that only make sense in sequence, and the failure is doing week-of tasks in week six while the admin that needs four weeks of notice goes untouched. Time-boxed columns put each task where it has to happen, so the ordering is built into the board.
Suggested WIP limit
No limits here. This is a fixed-scope project, so the useful signal is how full "Moving Week" is getting, not how much is in flight.
Template 6 of 6
Study Planner
A student working towards exams across several subjects.
To Study
3VOrganic chemistry — reaction mechanisms
Statistics — hypothesis testing
History — the interwar period
Learning
1/2BLinear algebra — eigenvectors
Watch the lecture again, then take notes from memory.
Practising
1APast paper 2024 — section B
Timed. 45 minutes, no notes.
Revising
1GFlashcards — formulas
Confident
1GCalculus — integration by parts
Why these columns
Reading a chapter is not the same as being able to answer a question on it, and a plain to-do list treats them identically. Separating Learning from Practising from Revising forces the distinction, and Revising becomes a real queue rather than a panic in the last week.
Suggested WIP limit
Two topics in Learning. Studying four subjects in parallel feels productive and retains almost nothing.
How to choose between them
A template is only a starting shape. What makes one right is whether its columns match the stages your work actually passes through — not how professional the names sound. Two questions usually settle it.
Where does your work get stuck? Whatever the answer, that needs to be its own column. If tasks stall waiting on someone else, you need a waiting column; if things get written but not checked, you need a review column. A stage that has no column is a stage you cannot see, and the whole value of a board is seeing where things sit.
What is the unit on a card? A chapter, a ticket, an errand, an application. Keep it consistent within a board. Mixing a two-minute errand with a three-week project on the same board makes both columns lie to you about how much is really in flight.
What a WIP limit is, and why every template suggests one
A work-in-progress limit is a cap on how many cards are allowed in a column at once. On this site the limit warns, it never blocks — you can always exceed it, you just get told. That is deliberate: a tool that refuses to let you record reality is a tool you will start working around.
The reason to set one is that starting is free and finishing is not. Without a limit, an in-progress column grows all week, everything is 80% done on Friday, and nothing shipped. A limit of two or three forces the question "what do I have to finish before I can start this?" at the moment you would otherwise have just started it.
Put the limit on the column where things pile up, which is rarely the first one. Set it slightly lower than feels comfortable — if it never triggers, it is not doing anything.
Printing a template, or saving it as a file
A kanban board template is more useful when you can get it back out of the browser. Press "Use this template" on any of the six above and it opens as a live board, where the Export menu gives you the same layout as a PDF with real selectable text, a PNG for a slide or a message, a CSV your spreadsheet will open cleanly, or a JSON file you can import on another device.
Ctrl+P prints the board rather than the web page around it: the site chrome disappears, the columns reflow to fit the paper, cards never break across a page, and the colour labels come out as letter-coded chips so they survive a black-and-white printer. An empty template on a wall is still a perfectly good board.
Starting from scratch instead
If none of these fit, the plain board starts with To Do, Doing and Done, which is enough for most work and easy to add to. Every new board gets those same three columns, every time, so you always know what you are getting. You can rename, reorder and add columns from the menu in any column header. Creating a kanban board online here costs no account and no setup — the board is live before you have decided what to put in it.
Want to see the shapes working on real problems first? The kanban board examples walk through six situations in more detail, including what goes wrong without each column. And if you are the only person who will ever touch the board, the personal kanban board is set up for exactly that, with a work-in-progress limit already on Today.
Frequently asked questions
How do I create a kanban board?
Name the stages your work actually passes through, make one column per stage, and put one task on each card. Start with three columns and add a fourth only when you can name a state work sits in for a meaningful length of time. On this site a board already exists — you edit it rather than create it.
How do I make a kanban board online for free?
Open the free kanban board and type. There is no sign-up step, no email and no trial, and the board saves as you type. If you would rather not start from an empty board, press "Use this template" on any of the six layouts above and edit it from there.
Can I make a kanban board in a spreadsheet?
Yes — a column per stage, a row per task, and you move a task by cutting and pasting the cell. It works. What you give up is dragging a card between columns, a live work-in-progress count per column, and an export built for the board shape rather than for a grid. The CSV export here goes the other way if you want both.