If Asana is going to call their boards Kanban boards, they should add the ability to set WIP “Limits” per status, and ideally add the ability to combine statuses within columns, and have limits for the columns (spanning multiple statuses). Without WIP limits, Asana isn’t a useful tool for doing kanban. There is a lot of prior art in the market for Kanban boards, and Asana can’t even count the work in progress, much less actually limit it.
Coincido mientras ASANA no incorpore la funcionalidad de limitar el WIP no puede decir que utiliza KANBAN de manera efectiva.
Ojala los desarrolladores le pongan manos a la obra y desarrollen pronto esta función.
We are struggling with setting limits for ourselves using Kanban and it would be amazing if Asana would limit us from adding additional items to either columns or specific people. Now that the dashboards have been improved we can at least see better what is going on, but still without something physically prohibiting us, it’s still a struggle.
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This would be of tremendous benefit to the Asana community, and to my teams in particular! 
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We would love this feature too! And i’m also sure Asana Community would improve work a lot because of this feature. Limit work is one of the basics to improve team work collaboration, service quality, productivity and reduce cognitive stress.
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Is WIP limits supported?
Has there been any workarounds to this discovered? We’d like to use Boards to Limit Work In Progress for each Section of the work flow as prescribed by Kanban principles.
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Hey all!
I want to add a Rule or something to one of the columns in my board, where I can limit how many items there are in that column
Example:
I have a backlog with many items, and I want a “In Progress” column to only have a maximum of 5 items at a time
Is there a way to make this possible?
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Welcome, @Martin_Kiperszmid,
This isn’t possible natively in Asana. I’ve merged your request into a thread where you can vote at the top with the purple vote button.
Thanks,
Larry
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Gotcha
Im seeing that the first message was on 2018, so its been 5 years and there’s no news related to this feature 
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2018 → 2023… 5 years and nothing.
This is poor form Asana… 
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I would really appreciate this capability as well. It would solve for a major need I have in which clients working in projects with me can only place one request into the ‘in progress’ section at a time. Trello offers this type of functionality which is really cool (see attached screenshot), and makes it easier to “enforce”.
Please add this soon, Asana!! 
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7 years now, going on 8. Is that possible?
As of February 18, 2026, this feature request is still not available in Asana.
This is extremely disappointing.
There are other features with significantly fewer votes, comments, and visible support that have been launched, developed, or at least acknowledged. Meanwhile, eight years have passed since the original post on this request, and there has not been a single meaningful update or response from Asana staff or developers.
The lack of transparency around prioritization is particularly frustrating. When highly supported feature requests remain unanswered for nearly a decade, it becomes difficult to understand how product decisions are being made.
I currently use Asana because it is the task management tool adopted by the company I work for. However, if I had the choice personally, I would not select it—specifically due to the absence of support for this feature and the unclear prioritization process.
I sincerely hope the team can provide an update, even if the answer is that this feature is not planned. Clear communication would be far better than continued silence.
Hey all! First, I’m genuinely sorry that we previously weren’t responsive as a Product team. That being said, I set out a year ago to change that culture, and though we haven’t responded to this thread, I am proud of the progress we’ve made overall (bat signal to my Forum Leaders to validate). Thank you @Marc_Olivé_i_Valls for (re)surfacing this thread! I fully understand how frustrating it is that we haven’t shipped this yet, but the most valuable thing for my team and I is a request rooted in a use case and pain points. The more actionable feedback you can give us the better 
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Thank you for asking for more concrete use cases — I appreciate the opportunity to clarify.
We actively use Asana boards as Kanban systems to manage operational work. Columns represent workflow states, and swim lanes have been a very positive addition. However, one of the core principles of Kanban is limiting Work In Progress (WIP). Without WIP limits, Asana boards visually resemble Kanban, but do not function as Kanban systems.
When there is no enforced limit on columns like “In Progress”, too many tasks get started at once. This increases context switching, slows completion rates, reduces predictability, and ultimately impacts service quality and team well-being. Dashboards help us see overload, but they don’t prevent it — and without structural constraints, teams tend to saturate.
At minimum, the ability to define a maximum number of tasks per column (with a visual warning or optional blocking rule) would make a significant difference. This is not an advanced enhancement, but a foundational capability for teams trying to apply Kanban properly within Asana.
We genuinely value Asana and want to continue building our workflows on it long term. I hope this provides helpful context, and I’d be happy to provide further details if useful.
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Validated!
Garrett and Asana product teams are passionate and are more directly engaged than I’ve seen in 13 years.
Thanks,
Larry
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I concur! @Garrett_Knoll and co. are bringing a refreshing change 
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