The Ultimate Guide to the Kanban Method & Principles

What is Kanban?

The word “kanban” is a Japanese term that means “sign” or “visual board.” In business, Kanban is a popular project management technique that advocates using visual cues to help teams track the progress of their work. Toyota created and utilized it as a just-in-time manufacturing scheduling tool. Moreover, a capitalized term known as “Kanban” is associated with the 2007 introduction of the “Kanban Method.”

Kanban gives team members a clear picture of what needs to be accomplished and when. In addition, Kanban can help teams identify and analyze bottlenecks in their workflow and take steps to improve efficiency. As a result, Kanban has become one of the most popular project management methods in recent years.

History of Kanban

The Kanban method was developed by David J. Anderson, a pioneer in the field of Lean, as a method for incremental, evolutionary processes and system change in knowledge-based organizations.

Kanban started as a scheduling tool for Lean manufacturing, which originated with Toyota’s Production System (TPS). Toyota began applying “just in time” manufacturing to its production in the late 1940s. A pull mechanism characterizes the technique. Rather than push production, where products and services are produced and pushed to the market, consumer demand drives manufacturing.

Kanban Glossary

Before fully delving into the topic, here are the main Kanban terms you should know:

• Kanban Board – A Kanban board is one of the essential elements of the Kanban method and serves as a visual representation of all work items. There should be three columns: Requested, In Progress, and Done, representing process stages.

• Kanban Card – Kanban cards track individual work items as they progress through a Kanban board. They include essential information about the tasks, such as a description, due date, size, and assignees.

• Columns – They divide the Kanban board vertically, with each one corresponding to a different step in the process. There are three default columns on each Kanban board: Requested, In Progress, and Done.

• Swimlanes – Horizontal lanes that divide Kanban boards. Using them, teams can visually separate work types on one board and group similar activities together.

• Cycle Time – The cycle time starts when a new activity enters the “in process” phase of your workflow, and someone is working on it.

• Lead Time – Measures the amount of time it takes an assignment to complete (whether or not someone is working on it) until the day it leaves the system.

• Throughput – The number of accomplishments that go through (completed) a system or process in a set period. The throughput is an important metric that reveals your team’s productivity over a period of time.

• Work in Progress (WIP) – The amount of work you have done up to now but haven’t finished.

• WIP limits – Limiting work in progress prevents overburdening and context switching by limiting the number of concurrent tasks.

• Classes of Service – Policies that help Agile teams prioritize work items and projects.

• Kanban Cadences – These recurring meetings bring about evolutionary change and “fit for purpose” service delivery.

• Kanban Software – A digital system that allows the application of Kanban concepts and methods to various teams, organizations, and sizes.

What are the 6 Kanban Principles?

For Kanban to succeed, every organization must carefully follow the six practical rules. Here are the six core principles of Kanban.

1. Visualize the Workflow

Kanban boards help you visualize your company’s workflow. Your board should reflect your current work process and allow you to track your progress easily.

2. Limit Work in Progress (WIP)

Limiting WIP helps teams focus on the task at hand and avoid multitasking. By capping the number of tasks each team member can work on at any given time, your team will remain focused.

3. Optimize the Flow of Work

Kanban aims to optimize workflow by eliminating bottlenecks and waste. Identifying and addressing these issues can help keep your workflow running smoothly.

4. Make Process Policies Explicit

Kanban asks that you make all process policies explicit. Task assignment, work prioritization, and decision-making are all involved. Making these policies clear can help team members understand the expectations and avoid confusion.

5. Feedback Loop

Kanban includes a feedback loop to help teams identify and address problems quickly. It helps ensure that issues are handled promptly and avoid disruptions to the workflow.

6. Collaborate

Kanban is a collaborative approach, and successful implementations require buy-in from all team members. Working together can help ensure that Kanban is successful in your organization.

How to Implement the Kanban Principles

To successfully apply the Kanban method to your organization, follow these steps:

Step 1: Focus on What You Do Right Now

Kanban allows you to use the method alongside established workflows, systems, and processes without jeopardizing what exists. The approach recognizes that existing processes are generally worth preserving and will only point out problems that must be addressed while ensuring that they are as non-disruptive as possible.

Step 2: Agree to Work Toward Small, Gradual Changes

The goal of the Kanban approach is to minimize resistance. It uses collaboration and feedback mechanisms to encourage continuous, minor incremental, and evolutionary modifications to the existing production process.

Step 3: Encourage Leadership Actions at All Levels

All levels of leadership are formed and enhanced through people’s everyday insights and actions. Every shared observation develops a continuous improvement mindset (Kaizen) that helps teams, departments, and enterprises reach their maximum potential.

Step 4: Focus on Customer Needs

Consumer value should be the focus of every business and their top priority is understanding client demands and expectations to provide quality services.

Step 5: Organize the Work

Manage the work in your network of services to allow people to self-organize around the job. Fcus on the intended outcomes without being distracted by micro-managing the service providers.

Step 6: Review the Network of Services Regularly

A service-oriented approach, once established, needs periodic reassessment to encourage a customer care mentality. Kanban encourages improved outcomes by monitoring the network and assessing existing work rules.

Kanban vs Scrum: What’s the Difference?

While both are frameworks, the most significant distinction between Scrum and Kanban is that the continuous delivery model created by Kanban teams releases value as soon as they are ready, whereas Scrum organizes tasks into Sprints. However, using one approach or the other depends on your process type. The Kanban approach is more personalized than Scrum, which relies on predetermined norms. A critical difference between the two is their fundamental beliefs and mentality.

Benefits of Kanban

Some of the benefits that have been reported by those who have implemented Kanban include:

• Increased visibility of the flow –  The basic concept of Kanban is to visualize all of one’s tasks. As a result, the Kanban board becomes a central information center where everyone is on the same page and has the visibility that they need to monitor projects.

• Improved delivery speed – Kanban allows project managers to monitor and evaluate work distribution—making it easy to detect stages where tasks linger and view completed work over specific durations. With this, bottlenecks are easy to identify, enabling teams to address issues and improve their delivery rate.

• Alignment between business goals and execution – The alignment between a company’s strategic plan and its implementation allows it to be more agile. It enables employees in teams to adjust to evolving market or consumer demands.

• Improved predictability – The Kanban board can show how long is spent on tasks in your workflow (cycle time). Understanding your delivery rate consistency (throughput) will help you make more accurate predictions and decisions based on past data.

• Increased customer satisfaction –  The Kanban principles direct you to reduce waste by working only on tasks that are currently required. By using visualization methods and establishing work-in-progress limits to the procedure, you can ensure that the conclusion meets your customers’ needs.

Kanban Tools for Project Management

Kanban Board and Kanban Card are two commonly used Kanban tools in project management. Below, we’ll explore each in more detail.

Kanban Board

Kanban boards visually show your tasks’ status as part of your workflow. This tool helps you stay on top of your tasks and keep track of their progress. Teams may use the following components to manage their workflows in the Kanban boards.

• Card

• Columns

• Swimlanes

• WIP Limits

Kanban boards come in two types: physical boards and digital boards.

Kanban Card

A Kanban card is a physical or virtual card that contains information about a task, such as a title, description, due date, and responsible person. The term derives from the Japanese term, Kanban, a visual (kan) card (ban). It’s an essential element of the Kanban method for monitoring activity progress along with a Kanban board.

Kanban cards can also be physical cards or digital cards.