A portfolio kanban board shows how projects and initiatives move through stage gates in their lifecycle. It’s one of the simplest boards you can create in Portfoleon – but also one of the most powerful for sparking the right conversations.

Boards are for conversations, not just observation. Portfoleon boards work best when they’re shared – with your team, your peers, your leadership. Use boards in meetings, invite others in.
Strategy isn’t something you “monitor” alone, it’s something you do together.

💬 Conversations to Have

A portfolio kanban is a way to see where things are moving, where they’re stuck, and where decisions need to be made.

Conversations that have the the most impact on strategy execution are flagged with 🚩 below.

Work in Progress (WIP)

Use the board to talk about what’s happening right now:

• Are all the initiatives that were supposed to start actually in motion?
• 🚩 Are we focused well enough or are we trying to do too many things at once?
• Do teams have enough space and clarity to do focused work?

Pipeline Health

Look ahead to future initiatives and have a productive discussion about:

• Are upcoming initiatives properly prioritized?
• Are they defined clearly enough to get started?
• Is there enough pipeline to keep teams productive?
• 🚩 Does the pipeline align with our current strategy?

By Department or Team

If you configure the board to split cards by department or group, you can also see:

• Does every team have enough planned work?
• Are any teams overloaded?

Completed Work

Use the “done” column to highlight accomplishments – and to reflect on what went well (or not) in recent deliveries.

Stalled Initiatives

Sometimes, a card gets stuck. If something hasn’t moved for weeks, it’s worth asking:

• Why is this initiative stuck?
• 🚩 What decision is missing?
• Who needs to weigh in?

The “go back in time” function is useful here – it lets you show how things have (or haven’t) progressed over time.

🚩 Example Difficult Conversation: Lack of Focus

Let’s say you’re a manager responsible for multiple teams. You notice that your teams are juggling too many initiatives – often switching focus, and losing momentum. The cause? Shifting priorities from leadership.

You need to raise this constructively with management.

Here’s how you might prepare:

• Create a portfolio kanban board.
• Use the “go back in time” feature to capture snapshots of the board from different moments in the past few months.
• Highlight how priorities have shifted and how projects stalled as a result.

In the meeting, make your case visually:

• Show that teams have too many projects in progress at once.
• Point out where priorities changed mid-stream – and how that disrupted delivery.

It’s easier to have a hard conversation when the story is visible.

🛠 How to Build This Board

Start by adding a field that tracks the stage of each initiative – for example: To Do / In Progress / Done – or use more formal gates, if needed.

Want to split the board by team, department, or business unit? Add that field too.

You can set up fields in the “Fields” menu:

Now, create a Kanban board:

• Set the columns to represent project stages

• Set the swimlanes to show teams, departments, or categories

During the conversation, feel free to drag cards between columns or swimlanes. Portfoleon updates the fields automatically – and stores the changes as a draft, so nothing is final until you’re ready.

💡 Tips to Make It Even Better

• Prioritize visually

  Configure the card order using a priority field. Dragging cards up/down will auto-update their rank.

• Show what matters

  Add extra fields to cards – like effort size, business impact, or dependencies – to support richer conversations.

• Use color

  Apply color coding to show initiative size, health status, or urgency at a glance.