Who owns prioritization of the board? Someone must, and they should put the most important task at the top of the first column. They should keep doing that, con

Who owns prioritization of the board? Someone must, and they should put the most important task at the top of the first column. They should keep doing that, constantly updating as things change. (Kanban ain't Scrum.) Then the devs are instructed to always grab the top card. If cards pile up below that... meh, doesn't matter. Because that board owner is making sure it doesn't matter because they already prioritized it all. If some old card is causing problems by not getting done... well, the board owner needs to prioritize it higher. Cards that never get done didn't need to be done anyway. Then, actually follow the rules of Kanban. Don't run a Kanban board with a Scrum team and think it will work. They are fundamentally different approaches to moving work forward. Basically, it is not about your board, it is about your leadership and culture. BTW, I never put the backlog on the dev's Kanban board. I am the one who needs to worry about all that noise, so I only expose them to the small subset of work that matters. I do give them access to the backlog so they are not in the dark, but don't mix that with their day-to-day board.