Triage, Committed, In motion, Waiting: define a pipeline your team can use

Agree the operating policy before rearranging cards

If one colleague moves a task to In motion when it is assigned and another does so only while working on it, the lane count cannot answer how much work is active. Start by agreeing a plain-language definition of each stage. The policy should help people choose the next action, not require a training course or a manager's permission for every card movement.

The Kanban Guide treats an explicit workflow and control of work in progress as part of managing flow. The table below is an original lightweight policy for this product's stages, not a claim that Critical Path implements a complete Kanban system or all of its metrics. The suggested entry and exit criteria are team agreements; the app does not verify that a deliverable is well defined before you move it.

Sources: The Kanban Guide, May 2025: explicit workflow and management of work in progress

Reserve In motion for work that has genuinely started

Committed is a queue of accepted promises. It is allowed to contain work that is not being done today, provided the owner can explain the next move and the timetable is believable. In motion represents current execution. Moving every accepted task there makes the active lane a second backlog and hides the decision about what receives attention next.

As a starting experiment, a small team might agree that one person normally has at most two actively executed tasks. That number is a policy to test, not a universal optimum or an application-enforced limit. When a third task must start, decide which existing action finishes, pauses, or changes owner. Do not rename unfinished work Committed solely to make a dashboard count look better; record the real change in the plan.

Know which task fields control the displayed lane

The product's lane is not an independent decoration. Blocked status takes precedence as At risk, and an overdue open task is also shown there. Otherwise Waiting maps to Waiting and In Progress maps to In motion. Not Started tasks can remain in Triage or Committed. Completed and Cancelled work leaves the active pipeline rather than occupying a permanent final column.

Changing the pipeline stage also updates the task status: choosing Waiting means the task is waiting, and choosing At risk marks it blocked. If a task is overdue, moving it to Committed does not erase the overdue condition. Review the underlying due date and recovery decision instead. Stage colors support scanning, but the visible labels and status meanings are the reference; do not rely on color alone to communicate the workflow.

Work through a queue without making every card urgent

The following fictional queue belongs to an operations lead. It contains five different situations, not five degrees of busyness. The unclear request needs a scope decision. The approved guide needs a working block. The supplier comparison is already consuming attention. The pricing answer belongs to another person. The overdue access review needs a recovery decision.

Review from consequences, not left to right. Resolve the access-review risk first if it threatens today's commitments, confirm the waiting checkpoint, and protect the next working block. Then decide whether to admit more work from Triage. This avoids treating every card movement as progress. A clarified cancellation can be a better decision than advancing a request nobody needs.

Prevent Waiting from becoming a quiet graveyard

Every waiting card needs three pieces of context: who owes the next move, what result is expected, and when the owner will review it. Populate Waiting on and add a concise task update. Waiting for approval is incomplete unless the approving counterpart and the requested decision are clear. The waiting task still has an accountable owner; the counterpart does not automatically inherit all responsibility.

At the checkpoint, choose continue, renegotiate, reassign, cancel, or escalate. Do not automatically return the task to In motion just because somebody replied; the response may not resolve the dependency. If reminders are enabled, check recipients and the displayed schedule. The current automated follow-up path requires explicit workspace recipients and a due date. More notifications cannot substitute for a missing agreement about what the other person is supposed to do.

Choose the destination rather than advancing by habit

Critical Path supports both moving a card and selecting a stage from its control. Use the explicit selector when the next state is not the next visual column. The Advance action follows the stage ordering; it is not a Complete button. In particular, finishing active work does not require moving it through Waiting and At risk. Open the task and complete it when its acceptance criteria and required plan steps are satisfied.

An automation may help tag blocked tasks or enable a follow-up policy, but first preview the exact matching route. The builder's current task-field actions do not enforce a work-in-progress limit or decide that an overdue task deserves a new due date. Keep those decisions explicit. If the team cannot explain why a rule should run, use a manual review until the policy is clear enough to encode safely.

1. Read the expected result and current task status.
2. Choose the actual next state using its definition.
3. Name the waiting counterpart or blocker when relevant.
4. Save and verify the card appears where the underlying status permits.
5. Close finished work through task completion, not repeated Advance clicks.

Review the policy using the cards that get stuck

After one week, inspect a few exceptions rather than declaring the new board successful because it is colorful. Which Committed task never had enough working time? Which In motion card was actually waiting? Which At risk item had a due date nobody had agreed to? These observations tell you whether the definitions are helping people make better commitments.

Change one rule at a time: clarify the acceptance check, require a named waiting counterpart, or reduce the number of simultaneously active items. Keep the same underlying tasks so the operating history remains useful. This board is not a substitute for calendar capacity, outcome judgment, or a full process analytics system. It is a shared answer to a smaller and essential question: what state is each commitment really in, and what decision moves it forward?

Common questions