Create kanban boards

We need a kanban board for the product team that tracks feature status from backlog to live. Make columns Backlog, Ready for Dev, In Progress, Blocked, QA, and Live. Pull every task tagged Product and label each card with assignee, due date, and priority. Sort Ready for Dev by priority descending. Before I invite the design lead, check for duplicate tasks and collapsed cards with missing descriptions.

Before I roll this out to the engineering and design teams, make the board approval-friendly: show a clear count of Live vs In Progress at the top, surface blockers in a red list, and put estimated effort on each card. Flag any task older than 30 days without an assignee and suggest whether to archive or split it.

I just created a project board and Ravi says Ready for Dev requires specs, while Ana thinks a sketch suffices. The product manager is out today and the sprint planning is tomorrow. I’m worried tickets will be shuffled without consistent readiness and we’ll miss the sprint goal. I can’t force a full spec and I don’t know how strict to be. What’s the most defensible rule to apply now and how do I communicate it so both engineers buy in?

Across seven projects we keep losing time re-defining columns and re-teaching teams what Ready or Blocked means. Each board becomes a custom debate and onboarding drags. Recommend one repeatable column definition set and a simple checklist to apply on Day 1 so boards are consistent, reduce sticky decision meetings, and cut board setup time by at least half.