Quickstart

Manage Your Tasks

Cards are the units where work, context, and responsibility meet

In KanBo, work is managed through cards. A card represents a concrete unit of work — such as a task, deliverable, decision, issue, or action — always placed in context. Cards are not simple to-do items.

They are living work objects that carry everything needed to complete work reliably.

Every card has a clear purpose and outcome

A card exists for a reason:

• to produce a result,
• to resolve an issue,
• or to deliver a defined piece of work

From the moment a card is created, it belongs to:

• a space (the broader context),
• a workflow (statuses and status types),
• and a responsible owner.

This ensures that work is never anonymous, isolated, or directionless.

Ownership is explicit

Each card has one responsible person.

This does not mean working alone — it means:

• one person is accountable for moving the card to Completed,
• co-workers contribute,
• observers stay informed.

Clear ownership prevents delays, ambiguity, and silent handovers. Work moves because someone is responsible for moving it.

Cards hold all execution context

Everything required to complete work lives inside the card:

• description and scope,
• notes for explanations or decisions,
• checklists to break work into steps,
• documents added from enterprise repositories,
• comments and discussions,
• full activity history.

This eliminates the need to search across emails, chats, or folders.
The Card becomes the single source of truth for that piece of work.

Progress is managed through statuses

Cards move through statuses, each interpreted by a status type:

• Information
• Not Started
• In Progress
• Completed
• Cancelled

Changing a Status is not cosmetic. It signals real progress — visible to everyone involved. Completion is explicit, shared, and measurable.

Cards are connected, not isolated

Work rarely stands alone.

KanBo allows Cards to be connected using relations:

• parent / sub for breaking down work,
• previous / next for sequencing,
• linked for logical or contextual connections.

These relations make dependencies visible and allow teams to understand impact across work — even across Spaces.

Cards move when work evolves

Each space in KanBo should represent one coherent workflow.

As work changes, cards can move:

• between statuses,
• between workflows,
• and even between spaces (when permissions allow).

When a Card moves, its context moves with it:

• history,
• documents,
• decisions,
• responsibility.

This allows work to continue without duplication or loss of knowledge.

Why this matters

KanBo Cards turn execution into a traceable, repeatable, and coordinated process — not a collection of disconnected actions. 

Task Managing	Outcome
When tasks are treated as disposable:	knowledge disappears, handovers fail, and outcomes depend on memory.
When work is managed through cards:	context is preserved, responsibility is clear, and completion becomes reliable.

Natural transition

With cards in place, the next step is understanding how to track progress and delivery at scale, without additional reporting effort.