From Big Plan to Daily Work#
A Gantt chart shows the season; a Kanban board manages today. Kanban is a project-management method where tasks are cards that move across columns representing their status. It is widely used in FRC, often via Trello, where tasks live in columns like:
- Backlog — everything that needs doing eventually.
- To Do — picked for this week.
- In Progress — actively being worked, with an owner.
- Blocked — waiting on something (a part, a decision, another sub-team).
- Done — completed.
Why Kanban Fits FRC#
Kanban is visual and lightweight, which suits a chaotic shop full of teenagers. Anyone can glance at the board and see what is in flight, what is stuck, and what is free to pick up. It also surfaces bottlenecks: if the "Blocked" column fills up, leadership knows exactly where to intervene.
Limiting Work in Progress#
A core Kanban idea is limiting how many cards are "In Progress" at once. Half-finished work is wasted work, so it is better to finish three tasks than to start ten. Encourage members to pull a new card only when their current one is done.
Common Tools#
- Trello — a popular free Kanban tool in FRC; simple and visual.
- Google Sheets / Google Workspace — for Gantt charts, budgets, and shared documents.
- Slack or Discord — for team communication, with channels per sub-team.
- GitHub — software sub-teams track code and issues here; the GitHub Issues/Projects board doubles as a Kanban board.
- Notion / Asana / Microsoft Planner — heavier options some larger teams use.
Keep your tool stack as small as possible. A rookie team is better served by one Trello board and one shared Drive folder than by five overlapping apps no one keeps updated.
Daily and Weekly Rhythms#
Layer rhythms on top of the tools:
- Start-of-meeting stand-up — each sub-team lead states what they did, what they will do, and what is blocking them (under five minutes total).
- Weekly planning — pull cards from Backlog into To Do, check against the Gantt chart.
- End-of-meeting cleanup — update card status before everyone leaves so the board reflects reality the next day.
Business Tasks on the Board#
Business work belongs on the board too: "draft sponsor thank-you letters," "finalize Impact essay," "book hotel block," "order pit banner." Tracking business tasks alongside technical ones keeps the whole organization moving in sync and prevents non-robot deadlines from being forgotten in the build-season blur.
the part worth keeping
Key takeaways
- A Kanban board (often Trello) tracks day-to-day tasks across status columns like To Do, In Progress, Blocked, and Done.
- Limiting work in progress prevents piles of half-finished tasks.
- Keep the tool stack small; one board plus shared Drive beats five overlapping apps.
- Daily stand-ups and end-of-meeting board cleanup keep the board honest and surface bottlenecks early.
Business, Operations & FundraisingProject Management Through Build Seasonlesson 3 of 3
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where this came from
Sources and corrections
This lesson is AI-assisted: drafted from primary sources, then reviewed and edited by hand. Errors still get through. When one is reported we fix it and write down what changed, in public, in the corrections log.
sources and further reading
- blog.thebluealliance.comCrash Course FRC: The Build Process (The Blue Alliance)
- trello.comTrello
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answer sheet
Lesson quiz
All 3 right completes the lesson. Miss one and only that question comes back, anything you already answered correctly stays banked.
0 of 3 answered
01What is the primary purpose of limiting work in progress on a Kanban board?
02How does Kanban have members take on new work?
03What is the core function of a Kanban board itself in an FRC shop?
Answer every question to submit.
All 49 lessons in Business, Operations & Fundraisingopenclose
01 / prerequisites
02 / team-structure-and-leadership
03 / project-management-build-season
04 / budgeting-finance-fundraising
05 / sustainability-documentation-business-plan
06 / first-impact-award
07 / understanding-the-cost
08 / first-grants-and-programs
09 / winning-corporate-sponsors
10 / grant-writing-events-crowdfunding
11 / stewardship-and-relationships
12 / worked-examples-business-toolkit
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- Not read yet:Mini-Project 4: Auto-Generate a Sponsor Impact Report from The Blue Alliance API
- Not read yet:Mini-Project 5: A Competition Travel & Logistics Planner
13 / common-mistakes-troubleshooting-operations
14 / advanced-techniques-case-studies
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