Or the ability to "dock" the tasks any where within the columns -- this would essentially allow users to create "groupings" or simulate the swimlane concept. This is the only feature missing right now that's stopping our company from moving to Kanbanery from another application.

I would like either having horizontal lanes that cross the entire board or to be able to split a column into two sections.  Having this ability makes it possible to create any process or board that you would make physically.

The main reason we like lanes, is to handle tasks that are not complete.  So what we do, is when a task is consider not complete, we move it down (instead of back left or blocking) and add a new task.  We can use blocked status to show this same thing, however we'd rather the blocked cards not count against the overall column limit

Another use case: a priority filter ala http://leansoftwareengineering.com/2008/08/19/priority-filter/

It would be nice to have the priority filter all in one vertical lane

Swim lanes would be of great help to us. We have development that is split between firmware and software. Tasks can be FW only or SW only or mixed. We have different people working on the FW and SW aspects of these task.

Swim lanes would allow FW and SW people to easily see what tasks are available to pull, much better than duplicating all task types to mention SW or FW. Moreover we would be able to set SW specific and FW specific WIP limits on the lane or, optionally, on each activity in the lane separately for each lane.

At the moment we have 4 SW devs and 1 FW dev and I don't have a good way to model the maximum WIP for each.

An alternative solution would be being able to split a column in two (a 'partial' swim lane), to model two different activities, with possibly different WIP limits, that happen to be in the same part of the workflow. I fear the implications on the reporting but this could resolve both the SW/FW dev problem and the modelling of different task completion results that is another important thing for us.

Horizontal swimlanes would be very useful in at least 3 different cases:

1. Visualizing different levels of item hierarchies (e.g. Epics vs. User Stories)
2. Visualizing different classes-of-services (e.g. Expedite, Fixed Date, Normal, Intangible)
3. Relating work items to larger components or projects in a single board

(Un)fortunately Kanban adoption is growing very rapidly for us.

I don't think swimlanes are useful for everything mentioned in this forum and some applications may go against the spirit of Kanban (like incomplete tasks!). However I'm now in dire need of them for my application, that essentially is a common value stream shared by resources with extremely different skills. Some tasks need to be passed between FW and SW in the same step in the workflow and sometimes completion needs two different specialised tasks in parallel. Anderson in his book resolves this exactly with swimlanes so I'm reasonably confident I really need them!

Could I propose a phased approach to have a basic feature earlier and start the feedback cycle?

1) First of all we could allow two different projects to coexist on the same web page, one on the top and one on the bottom. The minimum marketable features would be simply to allow task drag&drop between the boards and a way to modify what percentage of the page is dedicated to either project. This should be pretty easy.

2) Then first level of integration: have a project with two boards that must share the same workflow. Stats can still be separated, WIP are still separated but the screen is less cluttered.

3) Integrated stats, option for sharing the WIP limits between the two boards (I don't' need it but others might).

4) Extension to 3 and more swimlanes (most likely the above steps would have been done with this in mind, so this should be test/bugfix only)

Did I convince anyone? We love Kanbanery but our next step is more cross functional integration and we don't want to move just because of this feature!

Cheers,
Carlo

"There is one major online kanban tool on the market that supports horizontal swimlanes without using a table-based architecture and my fear is that we'd end up with a UI like theirs, which I really dislike."

Paul, which one are you refering to? Kanbantool.com or LeanKit Kanban?

Hello everyone,

I just want to show some support for this feature request. I just discovered kanbanery.com not too long ago, and I quite like it. In fact I was thinking about migrating my IT department's kanbans from Leankit Kanban to Kanbanery (majorly because of the comments and attachments for tasks). What's holding me back from doing so, is, precisely, the lack of swimlanes. I understand how painful it can be to adapt the current UI (which, btw, is rather nice and clean), but in my eyes it's THE thing that would make kanbanery the perfect tool (at least for our company's IT needs). 

To Carlo's suggestions, I would like to naively add that perhaps considering the "column" objects, as simple containers and allowing them to be vertically stacked could help achieve a swimlane effect in some way, without (hopefully) altering the UI too much. Also, allowing the columns to be double or triple width would, imho, be quite desirable.

Of course, I understand how big (and complex) this feature would be, but I still hope it may eventually be considered.

Cheers,

Ivan