How To Create A Kanban Board In Powerpoint

"Start where you are" is one of the mantras coined by David Anderson, pioneer of Kanban. Instead of having the first step of change be a transformation leap, have the first step be as close to the "as is" as possible. So when Covid-19 resulted in quite a bit of upheaval with my teams, I found that using PowerPoint for my Kanban teams was the best way to "Start where you are."

Here's why.

I'm a consultant, and many of my clients are government agencies. At my current client, we had several teams using sticky notes on physical Kanban boards on walls. Once California issued a "shelter in place" decision, all of my teams began working from home, so no one had access to their physical Kanban boards.

"No problem," you might say. "Just get the teams started with Kanbanize, Swift Kanban, Jira, Trello, or any of the other electronic Kanban boards." For me, this was not an option. Things in government often move painfully slowly, and it may take months for the government agency to grant approval for these teams to use one of these electronic tools. What would the teams do in the meantime with no Kanban board?

The answer was to "Start where you are."

I looked at the electronic tools that the teams did have access to. They included Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and SharePoint.

So I started where I was and created Kanban boards in PowerPoint and uploaded them to SharePoint.

Here is an image of a team Kanban board that I made in PowerPoint and uploaded to SharePoint. The columns, lines, and title on the master slide so that no one could accidentally click on them and move them.

Team Kanban Board

I created templates of sticky notes with different colors. I also created a few icons so that people could flag sticky notes.

Templates for Team Kanban Board

To help keep things fun, I included 60 different avatars that people could choose and attach to their sticky notes. Of course, people could paste their own avatars also.

Avatars for Team Kanban Board

I also included a slide of step-by-step instructions. I made it easy enough that it only needed 5 steps in the instructions and one link to Microsoft.com for tech support.

Kanban Board Instructions

Several people were using personal Kanban boards with sticky notes instead of team Kanban boards, and they really liked the tactile experience of a physical board. So I created a printable personal Kanban board for them.

Because people were working at home, their printers only printed on 8.5x11 paper, so I made the personal Kanban board print on a standard piece of paper.

Personal Kanban Board

I designed it to work well with the smaller sticky notes (1 3/8 inches x 1 7/8 inches). To keep it simple, I made boxes in the Doing column to suggest a WIP limit of three.

The solution was simple, and I may have never thought of it if the circumstances hadn't required it. It was just a Kanban board in PowerPoint that I uploaded to SharePoint so that multiple people could edit it at the same time. It got very positive feedback from everyone who saw it, and it was a major factor in the continued adoption of Kanban with my teams. And it all began with "Start where you are."

You're welcome to download my Team Kanban Board in PowerPoint and my Personal Kanban Board in PowerPoint from Google Drive. Let me know what you think.