Kanban for Solo Developers

I paid for Jira for 8 months as a solo developer. $10/month to manage my own tasks with a tool designed for 50-person teams. The board had 14 columns, 6 custom fields per ticket, and a workflow that required 3 status transitions to move something from "ready" to "done." I was spending more time managing the tool than doing actual work.

Why Jira Is Overkill for Solo Work

Enterprise project management tools solve enterprise problems. Sprint planning, capacity allocation across teams, dependency mapping between squads, stakeholder reporting. When you're one person building something, none of that applies. You don't need story points when you're the only person doing the stories. You don't need sprint ceremonies when your sprint is "whatever I can finish this week."

I've watched solo indie developers set up elaborate Linear boards, Notion databases with 12 properties, and ClickUp spaces with multiple views. Then they spend Sunday evening "grooming the backlog" like they're running a 20-person team. The overhead isn't justified by the output.

What solo work actually needs is simple: see what's on your plate, know what you're working on right now, and feel progress when things get done. A 3-column Kanban board handles all three in the most minimal way possible.

The 3-Column System

To Do: your backlog

The left column is everything you plan to do eventually. Not everything you could do. Not a brain dump of every idea you've ever had. It's a curated list of tasks you've committed to finishing in the near term. I keep mine under 15 items. If it grows past that, I move the lowest-priority stuff to a separate "someday" file and forget about it.

Each card should be actionable. "Improve performance" is not a task. "Add lazy loading to product images" is. The more specific your cards, the easier they are to start. Vague cards sit in To Do forever because you never feel ready enough to begin.

Doing: max 2 items

This is the constraint that makes the whole system work. Maximum 2 cards in Doing at any time. Not 3. Not "well, this one is almost done so it doesn't count." Two. Period.

Why 2 and not 1? Because sometimes you're blocked on something. You're waiting for an API response, a deploy to finish, a DNS change to propagate. Having a second active item means you can work on that while the first one waits. But the moment item one unblocks, you finish it before pulling anything new.

Why not 3? Because research from the American Psychological Association shows that switching between 3 tasks reduces your effective output on each by over 40%. You feel busy but accomplish less. Two tasks is the maximum where context switching costs stay manageable.

Done: your motivation fuel

Don't underestimate the Done column. Moving a card from Doing to Done gives you a micro-hit of completion satisfaction. It's a small thing, but over a week, watching 8-12 cards accumulate in Done tells your brain "you're making progress." Solo work is lonely. You don't have a team celebrating wins with you. The Done column is your visual proof that you're shipping.

I review my Done column every Friday. It tells me what I actually accomplished versus what I thought I'd accomplish. After a few weeks, you get realistic about your throughput. "I finish about 10 cards per week." That knowledge makes planning accurate instead of aspirational.

WIP Limits for One Person

WIP stands for Work In Progress, and limiting it is the single most impactful change I made to my solo workflow. Before the limit, I'd have 6-7 things "in progress" simultaneously. Each one 20% done. None of them shipping. I'd start my day staring at a board full of half-finished work and feel overwhelmed before writing a single line of code.

With a WIP limit of 2, my board looks calm. Two things are happening. Everything else is waiting its turn. When I finish one, I pull the next most important card from To Do. This creates a steady flow instead of a chaotic swirl.

The psychological effect surprised me. Fewer active items meant less cognitive load, less guilt about neglected tasks, and faster completion times for each individual item. I started finishing things in 1-2 days that used to take a week because I wasn't splitting my attention five ways.

My total output per month actually increased after reducing WIP. This seems counterintuitive. Doing less simultaneously produces more completed work. But it makes sense when you account for context switching overhead and the motivation effect of finishing things regularly.

When to Add More Columns

The 3-column setup works for 90% of solo work. But there are situations where a fourth column makes sense.

Blocked: If you frequently depend on external responses (client feedback, API access, DNS propagation), add a Blocked column between Doing and Done. Move items there when you can't progress them. This frees up a WIP slot without pretending the item is done. Check Blocked items daily and move them back to Doing when unblocked.

Review: If your workflow has a testing or review phase that's distinct from building, add a Review column before Done. This is useful for developers who write code and then need to test it separately, or writers who draft and then edit.

Don't go above 5 columns. The moment your board needs horizontal scrolling, it's too complex. The power of Kanban is seeing everything at a glance. If you can't do that, simplify.

My Solo Kanban Setup for 3 Projects

I currently maintain 3 projects: this website, a SaaS side project, and freelance client work. I don't use 3 separate boards. I use one board with color-coded cards. Blue for the website, green for the SaaS, orange for client work.

My WIP limit of 2 applies across all projects. That means if I have one website task and one SaaS task in Doing, I'm full. Client work has to wait. This forces me to be intentional about which project gets my limited daily hours.

Every Monday morning I spend 5 minutes reordering my To Do column. The most important items float to the top. Sometimes that means client work dominates the week because of a deadline. Other times my SaaS gets priority because I'm close to a launch. The board reflects reality, not aspirations.

Friday I archive Done items and count them. Last month's average: 11 cards per week. Knowing my throughput means I can promise clients realistic timelines. "I'll have that done in 4-5 days" instead of "maybe next week?"

A Kanban Board That Lives in Your Browser

I built our Kanban tool because every other option was either too heavy (Jira, Linear, Asana) or required an account and internet connection (Trello). I wanted something that opens instantly, stores data locally, and doesn't try to be anything more than cards in columns.

The board saves to your browser's localStorage. No account, no sync, no servers. You open the page and your board is there. Drag cards between columns. Set a WIP limit on Doing. Add color labels. That's it.

It won't replace Linear for a 10-person startup. It's not supposed to. It's for the solo developer who needs a board, not a platform. Pair it with the daily planner to decide which 2-3 cards to tackle today, and time-blocking to protect the hours you'll spend on them. Simple tools that do one job well and don't waste your time with features built for teams you don't have.