Is Kanban Board Free? Yes, If You Are Using ProdGoal

Is Kanban Board Free?

Yes, it is if you are using ProdGoal. I could finish the whole blog here and now, but it would be a shame not to mention all the wonderful free features ProdGoal Kanban board brings. And believe me, it brings a lot.

First on the list is the ProdGoal Kanban board. It is a free feature and you can have as many boards as you want. It is highly customizable and it comes with workflow states or workflow columns, whichever name suits you and your team the best. I will cover these features later in the text.

First on the list is the ProdGoal Kanban board. It is a free feature and you can have as many boards as you want. It is highly customizable and it comes with workflow states or workflow columns, whichever name suits you and your team the best. These features will be covered later in the text.

Kanban board cards or tasks are a crucial part of every Kanban Board and we know this. Users can create an unlimited number of cards and we won’t try to stop you in any way. They are also free features within the Kanban board that ProdGoal offers.

Other free Kanban features included are WIP (work in progress or work in process) limits. As you may know, this is one of the most powerful features to have when managing your workflow. It is available in Roadmap columns as well as in Board columns.

We also have parent and child connections integrated with Roadmap and Board cards as a free feature in Kanban Board. This is very handy when you want to see the bigger picture and what is the status of a bigger initiative.

And that is not all. ProdGoal includes several other useful features that will help you and your team make the best possible decisions. Roll out the strategy with your team with the help of Roadmap, Business, Product, and Personas free features.

They are very customizable and you can tweak them to suit your needs. There is also the Backlog view of the Board Tasks where you can sort the tasks into groups. The Backlog feature is also one of the ProdGoal’s free features.

An awesome thing about the groups is that they automatically forecast when the tasks are going to be finished. And they do this by using a very advanced forecasting method - probabilistic Monte Carlo simulations. Of course, you can make as many groups as you need.

So when we say that ProdGoal is free, we mean it. Try it out, it’s free forever, with unlimited users, and unlimited projects and you can cancel anytime.

ProdGoal Kanban Board

If you are not yet familiar with what Kanban Board is, you can learn about it here. Kanban Board uses a simple approach to help organize complex workflows and organization. And everyone has their own context that needs at least some special treatment.

This is why Kanban boards need to be flexible and customizable. Customization is important if not a crucial element in any Kanban Board, because of the very nature of Kanban.

Here we are talking about workflow states, adding and managing cards, WIP limits and board policies, assignees, work types, work categories, flagging blockers and even just changing the name of the Kanban board. We have thought not only of the big things but even these small details.

Free kanban board features

ProdGoal Kanban Board offers many free features which will help teams be productive. Let’s see what free Kanban Board features are:

Workflow states

Workflow state Categories

Waiting or Queue state

Max and Min WIP limits

Workflow state policies

Kanban board cards

Kanban board card customization

Kanban board card types

Kanban board card type categories

Kanban board card assignees

Flagging blockers

Kanban board Roadmap

Workflow States

I’ll start with the basics. Each workflow state can be renamed. Preset names “To Do“, “Doing“, and “Done“ can be easily changed with a click of a button. Rename columns and present your workflow in any way possible for maximum customization.

The Statuses can also be moved around using drag and drop, just like cards. This feature adds to Kanban board flexibility and super easy change of your workflow.

Workflow State Categories

There are 5 predefined categories (“Backlog“, “To Do“, “In Progress“, “Done“, “Archive“) which you can set for a workflow state. These categories represent the status of a column. It also tells the application whether to track the time a certain task has spent in a status.

We mean by this: Backlog and Archive categories don’t come into any calculations. “In Progress” category is used for counting days in progress and the cycle time, while “To Do” and ”Done” statuses are used to calculate the lead time.

Great thing is that the tracking happens under the hood - you just have to set the category in a, by now, known dropdown menu in the upper right corner of status and move the card!

Waiting Or Queue State

Every workflow state that has an “In progress” category has 2 additional modes that it can be in – “Waiting” (in a queue) and “Active”. Those options can be set by clicking on the 3 dots in the upper right corner of the status column and choosing the change category option. Use this feature to greatly improve your workflow efficiency.

Max And Min WIP Limits

A must-have feature in Kanban and especially in all online Kanban tools. WIP limits come with Kanban board status and Roadmap column features. You can set the limit from 0 to 99 tasks. The WIP limit is set via the dropdown menu in the upper right corner of the status.

When you set the Max WIP limit to some number, the number at the upper right will show up, representing how many tasks are limited to that column. As you move the tasks to the column with the WIP limit set, the number of tasks is going to get bigger, of course.

As the number of tasks approaches the Max WIP limit, you will see the WIP limit background color change to orange. That means you’ve hit the limit. Any more tasks added to the column will result in the background going red.

The Max WIP limit feature doesn’t prohibit you from adding as many tasks as you want in the column. But you should be still paying attention to it and taking the red flag as a sign for action.

The same goes with the Min WIP limit. You can set it from 0 to 99 as well. Of course, if it’s not higher than the Max WIP limit. The same color code applies to the Min WIP limit. When the limit is reached, the number background turns orange.

And when the limit is breached (see what I did there) the background turns red. As with the Max WIP limit, the task number in a column is not affected. But you should still follow the red flag and pull in more cards as soon as possible.

Workflow State Policies

The stages of your work process aren’t defined by Kanban, but by a team of people working together. ”The Policy” feature makes it a breeze to work out a policy defined and used by the team. This feature is included both in the Roadmap and in the Kanban board.

The same three dots you always click to get to the other features gets you to the Define Policy option. When you click on it, an input field opens up and lets you type or copy and paste your policy for that particular status. Easy, isn’t it?

Kanban Board Cards

This is a feature that every online Kanban board tool has. It is one of the cornerstone features of every Project management or Product management tool. Let’s see what ProdGoal Kanban board cards have to offer.

You can easily edit the name of your task with just one click on the pencil icon in the upper right corner of the card. Clicking on it also shows a dropdown menu where you can mark a card as blocked, change its type, or delete it.

Clicking on the card itself opens the modal where you can add an additional description for the card. All these features work will be explained in detail a bit later.

Kanban card feature offers Types to help you define the task as precisely as possible. The card type feature is not limited to any number. You can create as many types as you need to best define the task at hand.

As Kanban board statuses have categories, so do card types. 5 predefined item type categories are available for every card type. The difference being you can edit the names of the categories.

We can’t have a Kanban card without an option to mark the card as blocked. And it is color-coded too in order to get attention from other team members.

One feature that is on a must-have list is the Assignees feature. How are you going to work together on a project when there is no one to work with? Luckily, you can invite and assign as many people as you wish.

Kanban Board Card Customization

Activating option icons is done by hovering over the card. We will see the pencil icon and user icon show up in the upper right and lower right corner respectively. There can also be an hourglass icon, but more on that in a moment.

Editing the name of the card can also be done in the modal. The detail view text area is actually a text editor where you can add images and style and insert formatted text. I don’t have to mention that this is a free feature as well.

The images you upload are the only thing that is limited. Every account has 5MB of internal storage, but there is a way around it. Connect with your Google Drive and you can upload as many images as you want.

Deleting a card is done by selecting the option in the menu after clicking the pencil icon. It is color-coded to be easily recognized. When clicked, a confirmation pop-up, well, pops up and asks you if you are sure if you want to delete the card.

Kanban Board Card Types

Types come in handy when you want additional card customization. They work similarly to status types. They can be set in options when you click the pencil icon and hover over the types. There are 5 default card types made with every product: ”Bug”, “Story”, “Feature”, “Improvement”, and “BAU (Business As Usual)”.

You can add new ones, rename and delete existing types by clicking on the edit option in the types dropdown. Once you click on the edit option, a window will open where you can fine-tune the Types. Not only can you rename and delete them, but you can change the category they belong to.

Kanban Board Card Type Categories

Categories are pre-set and there are 5 of them by default: ”Default”, “Bug”, “Value”, “Maintenance”, “BAU”. You cannot add any more, but the good thing is that you can rename them, so they still add to the overall flexibility of the Kanban board. Category names are easily editable with a click of a button.

Kanban Board Card Assignees

The last but certainly not the least of the Kanban board card features is the assignee feature. When you hover over the card and click on the user icon in the lower right corner, a dropdown menu appears with a list of all the people you invited to your organization. The checkmarks on the right show you whether a person is assigned on the current card or not.

Cool thing about this feature is that when you invite team members to your organization, you can already assign them a card even if they haven’t accepted the invitation and registered yet.

Flagging Blockers

What often happens to teams is that work gets unpredictably delayed. Was it a bug in the code that caused it, or some other mishap, the fact remains that the task is on hold until all of the issues get resolved. Then it is up to the team to gather around and find a solution as soon as possible.

This feature is very useful to have and to let the other team members know if you or the workflow is delayed. When you click the pencil icon and select the Block option in the dropdown, the background of the card becomes red.

Kanban Roadmap

Kanban roadmap feature is the flagship ProdGoal feature. And it’s also free! Colorful, flexible, and robust, you and your team will definitely improve your workflow and productivity using this feature.

Roadmap has similar features to Kanban board. It has statuses and cards which share the feel of Kanban board’s statuses and tasks, though the Roadmap statuses have some features the board doesn’t (for now!). The same goes with the Roadmap cards.

One difference in features is that Roadmap has rows or swimlanes, whatever you prefer. The swimlanes are very customizable, because they have the text-editor input, so you can have rich-format text, add headings, paragraphs, emojis, etc..

The other difference in regards to Kanban board is that the swimlanes and statuses are collapsible. This feature puts users’ focus in mind. Collapse all, at the moment unnecessary tasks to point out the ones on which you are working. And it is as simple as it gets, you just have to click on the three dots to collapse a swimlane or a status column.

As for Roadmap cards, they come with a progress bar. It is a dynamic, color-coded bar that shows the progress of all board cards attached to the roadmap card. When you click on the bar, it lists all of the Kanban board cards attached to it, sorted by the status category.

It is very useful not having to scroll down all the way to Kanban board and search which card goes where. The color-coding next to the cards tells you what category it is in.

All In One Place For Your Product

As you can see, ProdGoal packs a lot of features. And we haven’t covered all of them yet. We gave you a glimpse of ProdGoal’s complex yet easy-to-use features. So give it a try today and let us know what you think! If you want, you can cancel anytime.

Contact us at team@prodgoal.com and feel free to sign up!!