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Kanban

Last modified: 16 November 2023

This workflow is designed to support a pull-based system where tasks are processed as capacity becomes available, which helps optimize team productivity and efficiency. It's meant to simulate a physical Kanban board where the tasks in each column are marked as Blocked (or another value like Ongoing) and Ready to pull (or Done).

It's specifically intended for teams where a single task is processed by different specialists through a series of handoffs. For example, a creative team where work passes from research to design, review, approval, quality assurance, and publication.

Using this model, any task that transitions from one column to the next is immediately flagged as Blocked. This prevents people further down the production pipeline from pulling the task until it is marked as Ready to pull. These statuses are stored in a dedicated field called Kanban State

In our example, the designers are free to work on any task that the research department has marked as Ready to pull, but the reviewers are blocked from pulling the same task until the designer has finished their work.