Personal Kanban Setup

Choose this exercise

Purpose: Make individual workload visible and enforce a work-in-progress limit of one to three active tasks.

Use it when: Use during individual planning, coaching sessions, or team retrospectives when participants feel overloaded with competing tasks.

Skip it when: Skip when a team needs to negotiate collective work handoffs on a shared production board rather than organizing individual workloads.

Group arrangement: Individual work carried out simultaneously, followed by optional peer check-in in pairs.

Timing: Based on the 10-15 minute duration in Gamestorming sources.

Materials and tools

• One sheet of blank paper (A4 or letter size) or a personal whiteboard per participant
• One pad of small sticky notes (e.g., 2x1.5 or 3x3 inch) per participant
• One fine-tip marker or pen per participant
• One visual timer displayed for the room

Before participants arrive

1. Place one sheet of paper, one pen, and a pad of sticky notes at each seat.
2. Draw a 4-column reference diagram on the main room board labeled: Backlog, Ready, Doing, and Done.

Say this to open

Take a blank sheet of paper and draw three vertical lines across it to make four columns: Backlog, Ready, Doing, and Done. We are going to map out your real tasks for today or this week, prioritize them, and place a strict limit of one to three tasks in progress. Your board is your own; you do not have to show confidential items to anyone.

How to run it

1. Set up columns and inventory backlog 4 minutes

   Draw four columns on your sheet: Backlog, Ready, Doing, Done. Write each concrete task you need to complete onto its own sticky note. Place all task notes into the Backlog column. Example task: 'Draft response to audit email.' Avoid vague notes like 'Admin.'

2. Select and rank Ready items 3 minutes

   Look across your Backlog. Select 3 to 6 tasks that are urgent or ready to tackle next. Move them into the Ready column. Arrange them vertically with highest priority at the top.

3. Pull into Doing with work-in-progress limit 3 minutes

   Pull 1, 2, or at most 3 items from the top of your Ready column into the Doing column. The rule is strict: you may never have more than three items in Doing at one time. Leave the remaining items in Ready or Backlog.

4. Pair share and debrief 5 minutes

   Turn to a neighbor. Share how many total items landed in your Backlog versus your initial Doing limit, and what rule you will use to move items into Done. If working solo, review your board silently. The facilitator takes two quick whole-room reflections.

Debrief questions

• What changed about your workload once every task was visible on paper?
• What made it difficult or easy to limit your Doing column to three items?

Finished output: A functional individual Kanban board with tasks organized across Backlog, Ready, Doing (maximum 3 items), and Done.

Remote

Have participants create a board in a digital whiteboard tool (using four columns on a personal frame) or work offline on their desk with paper. Run timer in the main room and place participants in breakout pairs for step 4.

Hybrid

In-person participants build physical boards on paper. Remote participants set up digital boards or paper at their desks. For the step 4 pair share, pair remote participants together in breakout rooms and in-person participants with adjacent table partners.

Access and participation choices

• Participants may use digital text lists, physical sticky notes, or index cards according to motor and visual preferences.
• Task descriptions remain private; participants can fold over notes or describe workload volume without sharing specific text.

If the session gets stuck

Participants place 10 items into the Doing column at the start.

Remind the room of the WIP limit: Doing means what you are actively touching right now. Enforce a ceiling of 3 and ask them to push the rest back into Ready.

A participant writes a huge multi-week project on a single note (e.g., 'Finish budget review').

Ask the participant to break that project into the very next physical action that takes under two hours (e.g., 'Download expense export').

Terms used here

• Work-in-progress (WIP) limit: A deliberate cap on the number of tasks being worked on simultaneously to prevent multitasking bottlenecks.
• Backlog: The holding area for all captured tasks that are not yet scheduled for immediate action.