Portfolio kanban
A Portfolio Kanban is the visual board that tracks large initiatives (portfolio epics) across discovery, analysis, implementation, and done, with WIP limits at each state to constrain how much portfolio work is in flight. The board is the operational artefact of Lean Portfolio Management.
Portfolio Kanban differs from team-level Kanban in cadence and granularity. Items are portfolio epics (months to a year of work, hundreds of stories underneath) and move through states slowly (weeks per state). The WIP limits are deliberately tight, typically 1-3 per state, to force prioritisation: starting a new epic requires finishing one or explicitly killing one. The discipline addresses the most common portfolio failure mode: 30 'in-progress' initiatives that all drift slowly because every team is splitting attention. Implementations vary: many orgs use Jira Portfolio, Aha!, Productboard, or a physical wall; the tool matters less than the discipline of caps.