Why Your Board Has Too Many Columns and How to Fix It
Why Your Board Has Too Many Columns and How to Fix It
TLDR: Boards with more than five or six columns create confusion and hide bottlenecks, and simplifying your workflow stages immediately improves team clarity and flow.
It starts innocently. Your Kanban board has three columns and works great. Then someone suggests adding a "Ready for Review" column. Then "QA Testing." Then "Waiting for Deploy." Then "Deployed to Staging." Then "Verified in Staging." Before you know it, your board has eleven columns and nobody can tell at a glance whether the project is healthy or on fire.
How Columns Multiply
Columns multiply because they are the easiest solution to any process complaint. "I do not know when something is ready for me to review" becomes a new column instead of a notification. "We need to distinguish between code review and QA" becomes two columns instead of a label. Every edge case in your workflow gets its own column, and the board grows wider until it requires horizontal scrolling.
Each new column solves the immediate problem but creates a broader one. The board becomes harder to scan visually. Cards move through more stages, creating more handoff points where work can stall. And the definition of what each column means becomes blurry, especially to new team members who were not present when the column was added.
The Column Audit
Take a screenshot of your current board. For each column, answer three questions.
Does work actively happen in this column? If a column is just a waiting area where cards sit until someone notices them, it is not adding value. It is hiding a handoff problem.
Can this column be merged with an adjacent one? "In Review" and "Ready to Merge" often describe the same phase of work. The distinction matters to the person doing the review but not to the team scanning the board.
Do cards spend more than a day in this column? Columns where cards pass through in minutes are ceremony, not workflow. If every card moves from "Ready for Deploy" to "Deployed" within an hour, those two states can be a single column or handled with a label.
The Five-Column Framework
Most teams work effectively with five columns or fewer. Here is a framework that covers the vast majority of workflows.
Backlog. Work that is defined and ready but not yet scheduled for the current sprint or cycle.
To Do. Work selected for the current sprint or cycle. These are the team's commitments for this period.
In Progress. Work that someone is actively working on right now. WIP limits apply here.
In Review. Work that is complete and awaiting feedback, testing, or approval. This column replaces separate columns for code review, QA, design review, and stakeholder approval.
Done. Work that meets the definition of done and requires no further action.
In LocalPM, setting up these five columns takes seconds. If you are starting fresh, the guide to setting up your first Kanban board walks through the process from scratch. The simplicity is a feature, not a limitation. Each column represents a meaningful state change, and the board is scannable in one glance.
Using Labels Instead of Columns
When you need to distinguish between types of work or substages within a column, labels are almost always better than columns.
Instead of separate columns for "Code Review" and "QA Testing," use the single In Review column with labels for "Code Review" and "QA." The card's position tells you its workflow stage. The label tells you the specific type of review. You get the same information without the visual clutter of extra columns.
Labels in LocalPM let you filter and categorize without expanding your board horizontally. A team member who only cares about QA items can filter by that label. Everyone else sees a clean, scannable board.
The Resistance You Will Face
Simplifying columns generates pushback. People who advocated for a column feel personally attached to it. Teams worry they will lose visibility into specific workflow stages. Managers want to know exactly where every item sits at all times.
Address these concerns directly. "We are not losing information. We are changing how we display it. Labels give us the same detail without making the board harder to read." Run the simplified board for two sprints and measure the impact. Most teams find that fewer columns means faster visual scanning, clearer bottleneck identification, and less time spent moving cards through ceremonial stages.
When More Columns Are Justified
Some workflows genuinely need more than five columns. Manufacturing processes, compliance-heavy industries, and multi-team handoff workflows may require additional stages. The test is whether each column represents a meaningful state where different people do different work. If the same person handles work in two adjacent columns, those columns can likely merge.
Your board should be a window into your workflow, not a bureaucratic representation of it. Every column should earn its place by providing clarity. When in doubt, remove the column and see if anyone notices. You might be surprised how often the answer is no. Alongside fewer columns, consider adding WIP limits to the columns you keep to improve flow even further.
Learn More
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