What is kanban? A plain guide to the method and the board

Kanban is Japanese for a signboard or visual signal. It comes from Toyota's production system, developed by Taiichi Ohno from the late 1940s. On the factory floor a kanban was a card that signalled when to make or deliver more parts, so each station produced only what the next one needed. Factories still use kanban cards this way.

In the 2000s, software teams adapted the idea for knowledge work, and David J. Anderson's book Kanban (2010) set it out as a method. Today the word usually means the board teams use to manage their work.

• Columns are the stages work passes through. The simplest board has To Do, In Progress and Done.
• Cards are pieces of work. Each one sits in the column for its current stage.
• Moving a card to the next column is how the team says the work moved on. Anyone can see the state of everything at a glance.

Teams add columns for the stages their work really goes through, like In Review or Waiting. See kanban board examples for 9 kinds of team, and kanban cards for what belongs on a card.

A board on its own is a to-do list with columns. What makes it kanban is the WIP limit: a cap on how many cards a column can hold. When In Progress is full, nobody starts anything new; they help finish what's there.

This feels slower and is faster. A team with 10 things half-done delivers nothing until they're all done. A team that limits itself to 4 finishes something every day or two. Little's Law puts a number on it: cycle time goes down as work in progress goes down, at the same pace of work.

In kanban, people pull work when they have room, rather than having it pushed onto them. Work is ordered in To Do, and whoever finishes something takes the next card from the top. Nobody is assigned 12 things at once, and the most important work always goes next.

• Everyone sees the same picture. No status meetings to find out who's doing what.
• Bottlenecks show themselves. When cards pile up in one column, that's where the problem is.
• Work gets finished. WIP limits stop the team spreading itself thin.
• It starts with what you do now. No new roles, meetings or job titles. You draw your current process and improve it.
• It handles change. Priorities can change between one card and the next, without waiting for a sprint to end.

1. Make a board with To Do, In Progress and Done.
2. Add a card for every piece of work the team has on, and put each one in its column.
3. Order To Do, most important at the top.
4. Set a WIP limit on In Progress, about 1 or 2 cards per person.
5. Look at the board together for a few minutes each day: what's stuck, and what's next?
6. After 2 weeks, adjust. Add a column where work waits, and change the limit if it's too tight or too loose.

In craaft, the kanban board template gives you step 1, and any column can take a WIP limit. Free for 3 projects, no credit card.

• The kanban method and its principles, for the full method behind the board.
• Kanban vs scrum, if you're choosing between them.
• Scrumban, for teams that want a bit of both.
• Cumulative flow diagrams, for watching flow over time.