2. Design your boards and lanes

Whether the rollout works is mostly decided here.

Slicing boards

A board is a playing field where tasks sit. The default rule: slice by the group of people who look at it every day.

Slice by	Good when
Team	You have standing teams. The safest default
Project	Several time-boxed engagements run in parallel
Area / feature	Ownership is fixed and cuts across engagements

Do not slice too finely

Every extra board adds a “where does this go?” decision, and that decision is itself synchronization. When in doubt, start with fewer. Adding is easy.

Note that projects exist as a separate concept. If you want to group work inside one board, use a project rather than another board.

Add and switch boards from Switch board in the header. In the sidebar you can put boards into groups and pin the ones you use most.

Picking lanes

A new board starts with three lanes.

Lane	Kind	Role
TODO	System	Not started
DOING	System	In progress
DONE	System	Finished

These are system lanes and cannot be renamed, because completion logic and analytics use the distinction.

Add your own lanes in between. Drag lane headers to reorder, and change lane colors.

Which lanes to add

Worth adding: stages where waiting happens.

• Awaiting review
• Awaiting confirmation
• Awaiting approval
• Awaiting release

With these as lanes, one look at the board tells you how many items are stuck where. Lowering your synchronous share starts with making that visible.

Not worth adding: lanes per person. Assignees are a field on the task, and the header filter can narrow by them. Filling lanes with people hides the stages.

Start with 4–6 lanes

TODO / DOING / DONE plus one to three of your own waiting stages is about right.

Example: launching a help center

For a team working together from writing to publication, use a Customer Experience board and a Help Center Launch project. Start with these four lanes.

Lane	Example task	Next action
TODO	Collect common support questions	Turn support questions into article ideas
DOING	Draft the getting-started guide	Write the steps for a new user
Review	Review the account setup article	Try the steps and return feedback
DONE	Agree on the article outline	The outline has been agreed

Review is a custom lane placed between DOING and DONE. When moving a task into review, pass the ball to the reviewer too, so the next person to act is clear.

Lanes show the stage of work. Help Center Launch is the project; Documentation and Bug are labels.

Next

3. Move your first task