Kanban Board
Build a Trello-style Kanban board with drag-and-drop cards between columns, task editing, labels, due dates, and board persistence.
Overview
Create a project management board where users organize tasks across customizable columns (To Do, In Progress, Review, Done). Implement drag-and-drop for reordering cards within columns and moving them between columns. Add task details: description, labels, due dates, and checklists.
The Kanban board is one of the most complex frontend take-home projects because it combines drag-and-drop interaction, nested sortable lists, cross-container movement, and optimistic state updates. Unlike a simple list or grid, the Kanban board requires reasoning about two-dimensional ordering: cards have positions within columns, and columns themselves can be reordered.
The drag-and-drop implementation alone covers multiple layers: detecting the drag source and drop target, computing the new position with fractional ordering, handling cross-column moves where a card must be removed from one list and inserted into another atomically, and rendering a drag overlay that follows the cursor. Getting this right with smooth animations and keyboard accessibility is what separates a senior implementation from a basic one.
For interviews, this project demonstrates advanced state management, complex interaction patterns, and architectural decisions that product companies specifically test for. Companies like Trello, Asana, Linear, and Notion ask variations of "build a Kanban board" as their primary frontend take-home assignment.
Interview questions
- Which drag-and-drop library should I use?
- How do I model the data structure?
- How do I handle cross-column moves?
- What features make this production-quality?
- How do I implement the task detail modal?
- How do I persist the board state?
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