Forums/Knowledge Base/Working with the Kanban Board

Edit the Board Layout

Chris Hefley
posted this on July 11, 2011 09:21 am

Edit the Board Layout

Within the Board view in edit mode, you are presented with the ability to manage the board layout and configuration.  The following steps take you through the different options that are available for board setup.

 Modify.png From the board, click the Modify button on the left-hand toolbar to edit the board layout.

Create a New Lane

- To create lanes, click the "Click to Add a Lane" section on the page. This will generate a new lane to the immediate right of this lane. Click this as many times as you need a new lane

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Lane Settings

For each lane, you can configure the properties of the lane. There are four fields you use to do this:
  • Limit - You can set limits on the number of cards allowed in a lane. To do this, enter a number in the Limit field. If a lane exceeds this limit, the user is notified that they have exceeded the limit for this lane, and they must provide a reason why they exceeded this limit. The default WIP limit is 0, meaning that there is no limit to the number of cards that can be placed in that lane.
  • Title - The title of this lane.
gear.png Click on the gear in each lane to enter the Lane Settings Dialog.
  • In the Lane Settings dialog:
  • Type - Select whether this lane represents work that is ''Ready'' to work on but not yet started, work that is ''In Process'', or work that is ''Completed''. Setting the Type for a parent Lane will cascade that setting to the child Lanes unless overridden by the child Lane.
  • Activity - Select the Activity that this Lane is associated with. Activities are organizational level groupings that allow common activities such as Design, Development, and Testing activities to be associated to Lanes.  This allows organizations to view metrics on the distribution of work across these activities.  Setting the Activity for a parent Lane will cascade that setting to the child Lanes unless overridden by the child Lane.  Activity types and colors can be edited from the Board Administration section (see Configuring Card Types)
  • Policy/Description - Provide the team members with an explicit policy or description of the Lane.  This allows teams to quantify their policies and prevents lost information.
     



In our example, we create three lanes to represent work that is ready, work that is in process, and work that is done.



Re-Arrange Lanes

By default, new lanes are placed on the left-hand side of your board. To rearrange your lanes, click the left and right (or up and down) arrows on the upper left-hand side of the lane to reposition the lane. 
Move Lanes Left and Right

Resize Lanes

By default, new lanes will be one card wide.  You can expand  or contract the width of a Lane clicking the right and left resize icons.  If the Lane that is being resized has child Lanes, the child lanes will be resized to fit the new parent Lane's width. This example demonstrates the icons that are used to resize Lanes.

Split a Lane

LeanKit Kanban allows you to split Lanes both vertically into sublanes and horizontally into swimlanes.  This capability provides the ability to easily map out very complex values streams.  Lanes can be split using the Lane split icons available when the Board is in Edit Mode.  The image below demonstrates the Horizontal Split and Vertical Split icons used to perform the splits.  Note that the Backlog and Archive Lanes may now be split into child Lanes also.
Note:  If Cards are contained in the Lane that is being split, the Cards will be moved to the first new child Lane.

 

Adding Extra Child Lanes

After splitting a parent Lane either horizontal or vertically, you may wish to add more child Lanes to the just split Parent Lane.  Once a Parent Lane is split, a new plus icon will be displayed in the Parent Lane.  Clicking this icon will add a new child Lane to the parent.  If the parent Lane was split vertically,  the new child Lane will be added to the right of the current children.  If the parent Lane was split vertically, the child Lane will be added to the bottom of the existing children. The image below demonstrates the Add Child Lane icon.

Un-splitting A Lane

If you wish to remove all child Lanes from a Parent Lane, you can click the Un-split icon located in the parent Lane's header.  This action will remove all child Lanes and will transfer any existing Cards into the Parent Lane.

Delete a Lane

If you wish to remove of a Lane from your process, you may do so by clicking the delete icon located within the Lane that you wish to delete.  The delete action can be performed on both Parent and Child Lanes.  Deleting a Parent Lane will delete all of its Child Lanes. This operation will not be allowed if there are cards contained within the lane you wish to delete.  You must first move these cards before deleting the lane.

Clone a Lane

When creating horizontal swimlanes on the Kanban board, you often run across the need to create another copy of an existing horizontal lane. Take the following example:
Now, we'd like to be able to simply copy the Feature Team A lane to create a Feature Team B lane with all the same sub-lanes. Using the "clone swimlane" button, we can:
Notice that the new lane title is "Feature Team A - Cloned". Now we can simply change that to "Feature Team B", and either save the board or create more copies for feature team C, D, etc.

Long Lane Titles

Lanes in LeanKit Kanban have a fixed width, so sometimes a lane title can be longer than what will fit in the lane header. In such cases, you'll see the lane title shrink:
And you'll notice the tooltip displayed above if you hover over the lane title with your mouse pointer. To prevent the font from shrinking, either make the lane wider to accommodate the text, or shorten the text so that it fits within the width of the lane.

Save Board Changes

When you have completed modification and configuring of your lanes, click the Save icon on the left-hand side of the page. This will save your board and take you to the primary Board Listing where you can manage your work.

Canceling Changes

If you wish to cancel any changes that you have made to your Board, you may click the Cancel icon on the left-hand side of the page.  This will discard any changes and return you back to the primary Board Listing page.

 
 
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