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We have an optional column for Review, only 20% of tickets need reviews and most don't. Here are our columns:
How do I implement optional columns in Kanban? My key concern is: An optional column breaks the "pull" concept of Kanban. Once a ticket has completed development, we need to decide if the ticket goes to Review or straight to testing. The Review or Testing columns can't pull from this column
If some of your items don't need review (although I think that's a bit unusual for a development flow), you can split your Development column in three sub-sections, something like this:
Once a ticket has completed development, you decide if the ticket goes to Review or straight to testing and signal this by placing it in the corresponding sub-column of Development. The Review or Testing can then pull from there.
Based on the comment that the Review column is for work that the implementer has identified as needing additional technical clarity or product or design review, I would suggest that the best course of action would be to remove the Reviewing column and address the underlying root cause(s).
Since Reviewing comes after Development, if the work was unclear and that review results in a changed understanding, the end result would be rework. Overprocessing (doing unnecessary work) and rework (either needing to do more work after inspection or inspection resulting in errors that result in the work being discarded) are two of the 7 wastes from Lean. The overreliance on inspection (which could also include testing) is also one of W. Edwards Deming's key principles for quality.
Depending on your process, the work should be sufficiently defined when it enters the Todo/Backlog column or you can consider moving the Reviewing column to before Development and have all work items move through that state, even if their time in it is very short. If there are ambiguities, the people performing development and testing can make sure that they agree on what the work means so it has a higher chance of moving through Development and Testing processes without issue.
