5 Free Online Kanban Boards Of 2022 You’ve Missed On
Introduction
Virtual Kanban board software has become increasingly popular in recent years, especially in the IT and software development industries. The number of online Kanban tools has been growing each year, so it has become hard to keep track of them.
That can also be a good thing because you can find exactly the tool you or your organization needs. This text is trying to put fresh and emerging tools on the radar.
ProdGoal
ProdGoal is a powerful and intuitive online Kanban tool that helps you visualize your workflow, and keeps everything in one centralized view so you don’t lose focus by switching to multiple views.
Due to the ProdGoal’s design, at a glance you can have information about the product’s strategy, or roadmap, and devlopment cycles of different features and capabilities. It will make the communication flow between you and your team members using the easy-to-use Kanban board.
ProdGoal doesn’t have pricing plans. It is a truly free online Kanban tool. The features included in the tool are unlimited. A credit card is not required, and you can cancel at any time.
Kanban board view has all the features to keep the flow moving. You can drag and drop columns to easily set up and organize the work. By setting the columns’ WIP limits, you can modify both the minimum and the maximum number of items in a column to ensure the work doesn’t get stuck or the workload becomes too high.
However, you will still be able to put the items in the column, even if the limit was breached. The color-coded indicator will warn you when that happens.
To further modify the columns, there are options such as column policies, where you can describe in detail the rules that apply to it. There are 5 column types to choose from - Backlog, To Do, In Progress, Done, and Archive. Columns with the In Progress type can have 2 states - Waiting and Active so you can fine-tune the process and check on your Flow efficiency.
The items are also feature-rich, and you can customize them to give you the most value. Easily editable, they won’t waste your time as you add more of them to the board. They have their types similar to columns: Default, Bug, Value, Maintenance, and Business-as-usual, or BAU for short. The types are color-coded so you can recognize the item at a glance.
You can flag a card as a blocker, which will color the card red to make sure it is noticed. As WIP limits, it doesn’t prevent you to move the card. If you want to track cycle and lead time, an icon shows up on a card when it moves to an In-progress column. The number represents the number of days a card has spent in a column, so you can use it for analytics.
Later, the backend calculates the Lead and Cycle time to use in automatic forecasting and helps you to get an estimate of when the future items will be done. The calculations are done using Monte-Carlo simulations.
Asigning multiple members is available on an item. Invited users can immediately be assigned a task. As for the attachments, it is possible to add them to an item by going to the advanced menu. Connect to a Google Drive via integration to get unlimited storage, because ProdGoal offers only 5MB of its internal storage. You can also format the text using a rich-text editor.
Getting around the tool is not complicated. In a few clicks, you can customize most of the features. There are templates to choose from when making new projects. A sidebar enables you to toggle the views you want to see in the central panel. Whether you are just starting with the Kanban methodology or you are experienced in the field, this tool will help you achieve better results.
YouTrack
Youtrack from JetBrains is a robust and complex project and product management software. Workflows in YouTrack let you customize and automate the lifecycle of issues in your project. Configuration options let you attach essential workflows to new projects automatically and control which rules apply to issues in each of your projects.
Youtrack’s pricing plans are straightforward. They have a free plan for 10 users, with a free trial of premium features to test out. After the trial ends, you can use the tool with basic features. There are 2 versions of the tool in regards to hosting - The cloud version, which means it is hosted by YouTrack, and the server version, which is hosted on your organization’s servers. There are also special options if you are migrating to YouTrack, or you work for an educational institution.
When you sign in to your account for the first time, you can customize the workflow rules for each project. There is a demo project ready for a quick start. You can view your issues in the Agile board’s view.
The Agile board’s view enables you to control your work process in a Kanban environment. There are columns and swimlanes, and they are collapsible so it helps you to focus on a particular column or swimlane you are working on.
You can set options for a board and its columns, cards, and charts in the Board settings view. Available options for columns are minimum and maximum WIP limits, defining a column or swimlane policy, and issue dependencies.
Issues have very complex customization options, and they will not be covered in this text, but the most important will be mentioned. Issue types can be created apart from the predefined ones and then added to an issue. There are also tags and labels to precisely define the issue’s purpose. An issue can, of course, be assigned to a team member or team members.
One of the interesting features is the version control integration with issues, so if you are working with a team of developers, this may be very useful to have. There are also time tracking options that can be turned on if you need to measure the time for the analytics and future estimates.
While lacking an onboarding process, it gives you hints and tips on how to use this tool. Nevertheless, you will spend some time before you get the hang of it. But it is worth the time as it is a very powerful tool where you will increase the effectiveness of your whole organization.
Flying Donut
Flying Donut is a simple, yet feature-filled online Kanban board tool. Created by the people who were looking for an online Agile tool, but couldn’t find one that fits their needs. With Agile methodology in mind, Flying Donut offered its services to the rest of the world, and it didn’t disappoint. Let’s see what it has to offer.
It has a Free Forever plan available for 10 members with 1 private project and unlimited public projects. The plan also includes basic email support and SSL protection. The paid plan costs $5 per user per month, but you get 20% off if you choose to pay annually.
Flying Donut gives access to students and academic staff members for free, and they have a 50% discount for academic institutions and non-profit organizations, which is cool if you are learning about Agile and Kanban methodology.
They have a short onboarding questionnaire when you create your account and log in for the first time. After you finish it, the project is created with the templates that best suit the answers you provided previously.
There are 3 views you can switch between - Overview, Board, and Backlog. Settings view is also in the sidebar, and there you can customize the columns and the general behavior of the project.
In the settings you can choose what is the default board you want to be used in a project - a Kanban board, a Scrum board, or a Scrum-Ban board, which is an interesting feature that adds to the flexibility and freshness of the tool.
If you choose Scrum or Scrum-Ban type board, a new option, the Sprint, will appear in the sidebar. Regarding the columns, they are flexible and have a lot of customization. You can set WIP limits but only the maximum ones. As for the column types, there are 3 predefined, and you can’t add more. Those are To Do, Doing, Done. You cannot define policies either.
The items are straightforward to use. Everything you add or set in the options menu will be displayed on the items. They are clean and read easily. There are no item types, but you can add labels them to serve that purpose. The labels are dynamic and unlimited. They are also color-coded and you can define the color in the options menu.
From the rest of the features, there is an item time-tracking, which is enabled in the settings view, and the estimates, which are based on the card’s lead and cycle time calculations. You can choose if you want to enable the feature.
Lastly, there are integrations with Github, Bitbucket, and Gitlab, which makes this tool more convenient for the developers.
All in all, a great tool for entry-level teams to improve their workflow, visualization, and communication while working in an Agile environment. The tool is simple to use and it does what it says, without any unnecessary complexity.
Hive
Hive is a time and product management, and team collaboration platform that is growing fast in popularity. It brings plenty of features to the table such as Automation, Gantt charts, Kanban boards, APIs, and more. We will focus on the Kanban board, but first, let’s review the pricing plans.
Hive has 3 plans: the Solo plan, which is free forever and is suited for personal use, and next we have the Teams plan, which starts at $12 per user per month if you pay annually, but it is $16 if you pay on monthly basis. The third plan is the Enterprise plan, and its price varies depending on your and your team’s needs.
The user experience is good. It is bright and colorful but not cluttered and chaotic. The board view fits nicely on the screen and you can pick up a lot of information on the board at the glance.
When you finish the registration process, you are asked to answer a couple of questions, so the project can be set up as close to your business needs as possible. After that, there is a list of onboarding tasks you need to do to get accustomed to the tool.
The columns have specific behavior, as their properties cannot be edited, except the names. The first and the last column have predefined types - Unstarted and Started, respectively, and those cannot be moved around.
Items have much more customization in contrast to the columns. You can add labels and tags to them, which are color-coded, make relations to other projects or items, add attachments and comments, and assign members. The assignees can be either single or multiple, but you have to select the option first if you want an item to have multiple assignees.
Hive has a sort of unique features, which are widgets, that you can add to your projects. They call them apps, and you can select them by clicking on an icon located in the sidebar. There are various useful apps like analytics, resourcing, and time-tracking. Some of them are limited to premium pricing plans.
The strong point of Hive, although it may not have all the Kanban features out of the box, is its integrations. It integrates with almost all known and mainstream online management tools. It has a lot of native integrations on its own, but it also has Zapier marketplace under the belt.
To conclude, it could be worth your time to check out this tool, if you are a beginner or an experienced professional. The learning curve is not steep, but it is long, because of all the options available.
Hygger
Hygger is an online Kanban software development tool. It centers around Agile methodology to bring out the most from you and your team while not wasting your time.
There are three pricing plans you can choose from. The Free plan, where you get an unlimited number of users, projects, and boards. The Standard plan, which goes from $7/user/month paid annually, and the Enterprise plan for which you have to contact the sales. They also offer a discount for non-profit organizations.
The design and the interface may look a little outdated, compared to some other online tools, but that is quickly put behind. The more concerning aspect is usability. There are too many options packed one next to the other, so it feels chaotic and intimidating.
Once you get used to it, Hygger is pretty easy to use, and you find out that everything is contextually placed. Each column can be edited from the menu on the column’s upper right side, which is intuitive. The columns have all the features a good Kanban board tool should have - WIP limits, both min and max, column policies, and column types.
A feature that is an addition to all the rest is a column Kind. A column can be of a simple or composite kind. That means that the column consists of 2 other subcolumns.
The swimlanes are also added to the board to maximize flexibility and improve the management capabilities. They can be edited too, but not to that degree as the columns.
The items have multiple different option menus from which they can be managed. There is the dropdown menu where you can edit the name, or add a label to it, and there is an expanded menu when you click on the item.
There you can assign value and effort rates, add attachments and comments, log the time activity has been done, or assign a member. All the management options can be done in this menu too.
If you are looking for an online virtual Kanban tool, Hygger proves to be just the right thing. It doesn’t try to be something more, and it is not less. Its layout can look cluttered and messy, but it just takes some time to set up and organize the pieces to suit your needs.
Closing words
These are some of the tools to rise to rank in the past period that offer their services for free. Try them out, and feel free to share your opinion with me, or if you know of any other tool and you think it could be added to this list, contact me at andrej@prodgoal.com.