What is Kanban in agile?

Closely connected to Lean, Kanban is the lightest of the Agile frameworks. It is an incremental, evolutionary change for technology development/operations organizations. Kanban is all about visualizing the work, limiting work in progress, and maximizing flow.

Origin of Kanban

Kanban is not a new concept; it has been used by the manufacturing units since 1940. Toyota, the famous car company in Japan developed Kanban to improve manufacturing efficiency. It is a scheduling system built for Just in Time manufacturing.

Based on this concept, Kanban was adopted by the knowledge work organizations. In 2011, David J. Anderson framed the Kanban method as a method to incremental, evolutionary process.

4 principles of Kanban –

• Start with what you do now
• Agree to pursue incremental, evolutionary change
• Respect the current process, roles, responsibilities & titles
• Encourage acts of leadership at all levels in your organization

6 practices of Kanban –

1. Visualize (the work, workflow and business risks)
2. Limit WIP
3. Manage Flow
4. Make Process Explicit
5. Implement Feedback Loops
6. Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally (using models & the scientific method)