What Is Kanban?

Kanban is a methodology that emphasizes improvement through a steady workflow where tasks move seamlessly from start to finish, minimizing waste and lag.

The heart of Kanban is the visual approach—the promised efficiency lies in visualizing work using “Kanban boards” to help teams track progress and manage tasks more effectively.

 

A Brief History

The word “Kanban” combines the Japanese words for “sign” (Kan 看) and “board” (Ban 板), reflecting its visual nature. 👁️👁️

Kanban originated in the 1940s, when Toyota engineer Taiichi Ohno revolutionized manufacturing by shifting from a “push” process (anticipating demand) to a “pull” process (fabricating based on market demand). Instead of pushing work into the system, Kanban pulls tasks from a backlog.

This ensures a steady flow and prevents overloading team members by limiting the amount of work on the “to do” column.

 

Kanban is now widely used to visualize work and enhance collaboration, allowing people to manage tasks more efficiently by minimizing work in progress (WIP).

 

Why Use Kanban?

By visualizing workflows, teams optimize resource allocation and maintain a steady pace.

Kanban encourages iterative refinement, empowering teams to evolve their processes.

Whether in software or product development and other domains, Kanban adapts to your team’s needs.

 

 

How Does It Work?

Kanban Boards are visual boards that represent work stages as columns and tasks as cards.

As work progresses, cards move across columns, giving workers real-time visibility.

You can add or modify columns as needed!

 

 

In a typical Kanban board, you’ll find several columns, which you can customize to fit your team’s specific workflow:

Backlog: Tasks to be approached later on. It’s the starting point for your team.

To-Do: Tasks that are ready to be worked on. They’re next in line for team members.

In Progress: Tasks actively being worked on now. It’s where the action happens.

Review/QA: After completion, tasks move here for review or quality assurance.

Done: Tasks that have been successfully completed end up in this column.

 

This system also measures performance using metrics like lead time (from request to completion) and cycle time (time spent actively working on a task).

It includes retrospectives, which means your team will be regularly discussing improvements.

 

In Kanban, managing blocked tasks is crucial for maintaining a smooth workflow. 🔒

Blocked work items are made visible on your Kanban board using a flag or a marker to highlight the cards we aren’t being able to work on just yet.

We can include details on the card, such as the reasons (lack of information, unclear requirements…) for the blockage, the person responsible for unblocking the work item, the date of blocking, etc.

Blocked issues will be escalated and then the team will determine when and how to address them, promptly.

Handling blocked work with urgency ensures a more predictable delivery process. 🚀

 

Similarities between Kanban, Lean, and Kaizen

 

👉🏻 Kanban

As we’ve established, Kanban visualizes work and optimizes the flow of work items across different stages. The boards represent workflow stages and work items, and it sets limits on work-in-progress levels and fine-tunes each step to boost productivity.

In businesses that opted for Kanban, customer demand drives work (pull-based).

 

👉🏻 Kaizen

Kaizen means “continuous improvement.”

It’s a mindset fostering ongoing learning and positive change. It encourages small incremental changes and input from all levels, with a focus on waste reduction.

While Kanban focuses on visualizing work and optimizing flow, Kaizen promotes a company culture of continuous improvement.

 

👉🏻 Lean Six Sigma

The main difference here is that Kanban utilizes visualization as its main tool for spotting and eliminating problems, while Lean relies on statistical data and analysis.

They are both process-oriented, but Kanban focuses on the team, while Lean is customer-focused.

 

Kaizen complements Kanban by driving continuous improvement and employee engagement. Organizations can adopt both methodologies simultaneously for better results. 🌟

 

 

Personal Kanban for Daily Life

 

The Kanban system can also be used in our daily life to stay organized and improve productivity. 🌟

 

The Personal Kanban methodology adapts this philosophy to help individuals manage their daily lives.

Here’s how you can put it to good use:

 

Create Your Personal Kanban Board:

📌  Divide a whiteboard, a blank sheet or colored post-its on your refrigerator door into 3 vertical sections:

“To Do,” “Doing,” and “Done.”

📌  Now, add tasks to each of the columns using a sharpie or markers.

📌 It’s important to be consistent and limit the “Doing” column to 3 or 4 tasks at a time to maximize productivity.

 

Personal Kanban helps you organize your life by prioritizing tasks effectively through visual representation.

 

You’re probably wondering, why is there a “Done” column? Why do we need to track chores that are done and over?

That’s because seeing your completed tasks makes you feel motivated and fulfilled! So you are more likely to be consistent and continue using the process.

Taiichi Ohno was a really smart guy, right?

 

Who Could Benefit from Personal Kanban?

👉🏻 Home managers: Organize both household chores and personal projects.

👉🏻 Students: Optimize studying time by managing assignments.

👉🏻 Remote workers: Track work progress efficiently to improve work-life balance.

 

 

From the Toyota factory floor in the 1940s all the way to modern software development, Kanban—like other Japanese methodologies—has stood the test of time!

Embrace this philosophy, use boards to visualize your work or chores, and get ready to watch things move from “to-do” to “done”! 🚀

 

To know more, take a look at this extra information:

👉🏻 https://asana.com/resources/what-is-kanban

👉🏻 https://www.agilefever.com/blog/Kanban-vs-Kaizen-A-Comprehensive-Analysis-for-Process-Improvement/

 

 

If you found this article engaging and informative, we have a lot more tricks up our sleeve to meet your copywriting needs!

And if you have any questions, feel free to leave us a comment. 😊👍

 

Meanwhile, check out our professional translation, proofreading and copywriting services here:

https://verbarium-boutique.com/choosing-service/