The Ultimate Guide to Kanban Methodology

Kanban is one of the most popular Agile project management frameworks around, and for good reason. The Kanban methodology takes a visual approach to project management that many people find intuitive and appealing. Plus, its emphasis on delivery can help teams improve their efficiency and increase their overall output.

If you’re new to Kanban, our ultimate guide includes everything you need to get started. We’ll cover the basics of what Kanban is and isn’t. Then we’ll discuss the benefits of the Kanban methodology, the types of projects it's best suited for, how to successfully implement it, and what tools can help you succeed.

What is Kanban?

Agile is a project methodology that promotes tackling projects by breaking them down into smaller stages. It emphasizes constant collaboration, continuous improvement, and high-levels of customer involvement. There are various frameworks teams can choose to follow to adopt Agile, Kanban being one of them. Think of Agile as being what you want to achieve and Kanban being one recipe for how to achieve it.

Where does Kanban come from?

Kanban originated in the late 1940s in Japan. Toyota was looking for a way to improve their engineering and production processes. Company leadership noticed that grocery stores used a “pull” method of production, where they stocked based on expected customer demand to avoid having too many products on the shelf.

Toyota decided to run with this idea of “just-in-time” production and implemented it in its main factory in 1953. The Kanban process was the result of this adaptation.

“Kanban” is a Japanese word that roughly translates to “card you can see.” Toyota used physical cards to signal separate steps in their manufacturing process. These cards enabled team members to easily see what was completed and what still needed to be done.

It wasn’t until the early 2000s that Kanban started to take root in project management. David J. Anderson is often credited as being the first to implement Kanban in software development in 2005. His book on Kanban , published in 2010, is still one of the most comprehensive resources out there for technology-focused projects.

Since then, the Kanban Agile methodology has continued to evolve to suit projects across all industries and markets.

What are the fundamentals of Kanban?

Kanban is about more than using cards to help manage just-in-time delivery. The Kanban framework is designed to help teams reduce bottlenecks, improve efficiencies, increase quality , and boost output. Kanban is based on four principles and six core practices.

The 4 principles of Kanban are:

Kanban methodology’s six core practices are:

What is a Kanban board?

The Kanban board is a physical or virtual board that maps out your project’s workflow and how tasks move through it from beginning to completion. A Kanban board ensures the workflow is standardized, and that team members can easily see where each task is in the overall scheme.

The most basic Kanban board only has three workflows: To Do, In Progress, and Complete. But, columns can be added or changed to suit your project.

Each task is represented as a “card” and placed on the board in the column representing its current stage of work. As tasks progress, the card is moved throughout the workflow. Each card will contain information about the task, such as:

Virtual cards may also contain other data, including links to relevant documents and supporting files.

How is Kanban methodology different from Scrum?

Scrum is another extremely popular Agile project framework. As both Kanban and Scrum are based on the Agile project methodology, they have similar principles and ideals. Both frameworks encourage collaboration, process improvement, and breaking projects down into phases. However, there are essential differences.

The Kanban process focuses on breaking a project down into workflow stages and managing the flow and volume of tasks through those stages. Scrum revolves around breaking a project down by time (usually 1–2-week “sprints”) and managing tasks completed in each sprint.

Kanban project management isn’t time-based. While cards may have deadlines or estimated times to complete, Kanban is viewed as a continuous flow. It’s often used by IT service desks and other teams who have a never-ending flow of tasks.

Scrum also has several unique roles, such as Scrum master , product owner , etc. While Kanban encourages keeping the roles your team already have. Generally, Scrum is better for time-sensitive projects, while Kanban better suits teams with a continuous influx of new tasks. However, many teams are adopting a fairly new framework called Scrumban that attempts to capture the best of both worlds.

What are the benefits of the Kanban process?

The primary benefits of the Kanban methodology are:

What types of projects is Kanban best for?

Kanban project management is best for projects that have a lot of individual deliverables and an emphasis on workloads over delivery dates. Because an individual card represents each task, projects with a lot of interdependencies may suffer.

However, suppose you’re dealing with a large volume of tasks that have multiple discrete statuses, with a different person responsible for each one. In that case, Kanban can help you effectively monitor each stage of the process.

Some examples of projects that do well with Kanban are:

How to introduce Kanban style project management

The principles of Kanban tell you to start with whatever you’re doing now and slowly implement changes over time. To introduce Kanban project management to your project team, you can start slowly incorporating it into what you’re already doing.

Start by documenting your current processes and identifying the work stages your team uses, such as "To Do," "In Draft," "In Review," and "Approved." Next, create a Kanban board to visualize this workflow. You can use our template to help you.

Once you can see your workflow, it’s time to analyze how efficient your team is, look for bottlenecks, and set some limits on work-in-progress. See how many tasks are going through each stage without limits, and where they are getting bogged down. Then, set limits and monitor how they change performance. If you end up with idle people, you can either increase your limits, reallocate work, or look for what’s causing some phases to move faster than others.

If you don’t have clear guidelines already about what each stage means and when it's ready to move on, it’s time to create those outlines. If you’re using Kanban project software, you can create a checklist or overview for each stage of the workflow.

The next step will be to implement short feedback loops . You can do this by introducing daily meetings, review stages, or reports and dashboards showing key metrics, such as cycle time (the average time it takes for a task to complete the workflow).

As your team slowly adopts more Kanban processes , encourage them to speak up about what works well and what could be better. Prompt them for suggestions on how to improve and promote them to take on a leadership mindset.

Finally: evolve. Measure progress and performance and be ready to adapt and change as you and your team discover new and better ways to do things. Kanban is about incremental progress and isn’t meant to be a static framework that stays the same forever.

Features to look out for in Kanban software

While you can implement Kanban using a physical board and cards, Kanban board software offers many benefits:

When selecting the best Kanban project management tool for your team, keep in mind that Kanban promotes incremental change. If you can find a solution that supports your current project management framework as well as Kanban, it will make the transition much smoother than a Kanban-only tool.

Other features to look for in Kanban software include:

Why UDN Task Manager is the ultimate Kanban project management tool

UDN Task Manager offers multiple project views, including Kanban, Gantt, Task view, and more. You can input project data once and then manage it in whichever format you prefer. So, your team can still use their normal processes and views while you slowly incorporate the Kanban board as well.

With our free Kanban template , you can start incorporating the Kanban methodology right away. UDN Task Manager lets you visually manage your project, limit the volume of work in progress, focus on removing bottlenecks and managing workflow, and improve your processes as you go. Plus, our project management software offers all of the essential features you need in a Kanban tool . Sign up for a free trial today !