What is Kanban: A tutorial

Kanban is a popular project management system that tracks the progress of action items in single or multiple projects. It’s best used to manage workflows for single teams, but it can also effectively track a project that requires work and input from multiple departments. The Kanban methodology is a feature in some of the best project management software. Let’s take a closer look.

The history of kanban

The word “kanban” and its methodology originated in Japan. The word comes from two Japanese words: “kan,” which means sign, and “ban,” which means board. 

The first kanbans came about in 1603 when the nation stabilized after nearly 100 years of war, and the economy thrived. Businesses on shop-lined streets began to hang signboards to advertise their names and services, customizing them as the market became more competitive. Over time, these kanbans became more artistic and ornate — some of the earliest examples of business branding.

The rise of Toyota

Ford revolutionized the automobile industry with the assembly line. In doing so, it also helped popularize the concept of workflow. 

Toyota followed a similar path. After World War II, the Japanese automobile industry had grown stagnant and the company was bleeding profits. CEO Kiichiro Toyoda embarked on a mission to reduce the productivity gap between his company and automakers in the United States. This changed Toyota’s culture and brought about a new era of innovation. In 1954, Taiichi Ohno, an industrial engineer at the company, identified seven kinds of waste that slowed down factory throughput and performance. 

One of these was overproduction. Because customer demands often change over time, Ohno realized the only way to prevent waste was to limit production to just what’s needed, when it’s needed. This allowed Toyota to keep stocks low and speed up manufacturing. However, finding a system to signal when specific products should be made was a challenge.

The breakthrough came when Ohno developed a system of using paper cards to track products through the factory and signal their demand. Appropriately, he referred to these paper cards as kanbans. Ohno studied data to determine Toyota’s ideal stock and how long it took to make each product. He then used the kanbans to track each item from production to sale so it was clear when stock needed replenishing. Team members attached a kanban card to every finished piece to track it. Each time products were sold, the card was recollected and taken back to the beginning of the production line to signal it was time to assemble a new one.

Eventually, Toyota used this system to track every single part and material in manufacturing. By 1963, the technique was broadened and applied to the entire company. This kanban system became known as the Toyota Production System.

Kanban in the information era

The Toyota Production System spread to other industries and influenced their approach to workflows. Toyota’s kanban method achieved the biggest impact in software development. For some time, the industry had been moving away from cumbersome procedures to a lighter or “agile” workflow based on the Agile Manifesto, which called upon developers to “deliver working software frequently” but provided no clear ways to do this consistently.

Other systems, such as scrum and eventually kanban, evolved to fill that gap as kanban boards provided a way to break work down into stages. Kanban’s popularity reached a peak in 2009 when workflow experts and thought leaders wrote extensively about it, especially in comparison to other methodologies. Developers of workflow management software started incorporating kanban visualizations and flow views into their tools.

It soon became apparent that kanban worked well for every type of repeatable process, regardless of the industry. Now, kanban is a popular tool for organizing work in manufacturing, human resources, marketing, and sales. The US military even uses aspects of kanban for some of its operations.

Benefits of the kanban method

Kanban as we know it today has had a major impact on the way we understand and think about work. However, it offers distinct benefits in project and task management. Here are some of these benefits:

Visualizes processes and work

Kanban boards clearly convey the work that goes into a project and illustrates the steps action items must go through — usually as a series of stages. Since kanban is best for repeatable actions, the same cards can be reused as they advance from beginning to completion, clearly illustrating a project’s individual components.

Limits work in progress 

Work in progress (WIP) limits are one of the most important and defining aspects of kanban. By limiting the amount of work an organization or team is completing at any given time, it’s easier to smooth workflow, cut lead times, and deliver more frequently.

Helps define policies

Advancing work requires organizations to clarify their definition of “done,” how much each individual or team is expected to do at once, and WIP limits. These elements might be missed in other workflow systems, causing teams to take on more than they can handle. 

Organizes flow

By clearly determining policies, workflows become more predictable, since they eliminate bottlenecks and uncertainty around processes and outcomes. This predictability forms the basis of flow. It turns work into a continuous, uninterrupted, and easy stream of activities. 

Encourages collaboration

Because kanban creates transparency, it’s easy for everyone involved to see and understand the workflow, even beyond the parts they are responsible for. This opens the door to greater communication, input, and feedback from everyone, allowing teams to collectively tweak workflows to achieve optimal productivity.

Kaizen: the outcome of kanban

Another workflow principle that originated in Japan is “kaizen.” The word can be translated as “change for the better” or “continuous improvement.” The philosophy is practiced by regularly implementing improvements that streamline operations for each employee. These refinements make the environment more collaborative and efficient, ensure employee engagement, and make work safer, more fulfilling, and less tiresome. 

As its own methodology, kaizen can complement or compete with kanban. Following either methodology is a choice many organizations may be faced with. However, when executed correctly, kanban will always lead to the defining principle of kaizen — improvement.

Kanban helps organizations avoid the pitfalls of other workflow management systems, such as burnout and lack of purpose. However, the kanban methodology may require an organization and its employees to approach work in a different way than they’re used to. Just as Toyota transformed its company culture to be more innovative, the kanban method changes employee engagement and attitudes about success.

The principles of kanban

Kanban isn’t just a work management methodology — it’s an ideology focused on how to approach problems and inspire collaboration to achieve optimal flow. These are some of kanban’s guiding principles:

Begin where you are

Kanban is best understood as a framework that helps organizations prioritize and pace work. Therefore, you can apply it to your existing processes without changing anything other than cadence.

Know that capacity is key

At its core, kanban is a “pull system,” in which workers take on tasks in response to production needs. In other methods, those at the top of the hierarchy determine what work to assign to employees underneath them. With kanban, work is brought into the queue as needed when teams have the capacity for it. 

Remember the best change is slow change

The benefits of kanban reveal themselves gradually over time. Sudden and drastic changes to workflows cause well-documented and unnecessary stress to employees, hinder performance, and reduce productivity. Kanban’s design bypasses resistance by letting necessary changes become so apparent that teams collectively apply them over time.

Respect existing structures

Kanban doesn’t shuffle hierarchies, roles, or employee responsibilities. The kanban methodology understands that existing structures are worth preserving but allows for gradual changes and improvements to evolve.

Encourage leadership

Kanban makes an organization’s workflow incredibly transparent, so everyone can easily identify issues. Even low-ranking employees may have ideas about how to improve processes. The kanban methodology encourages managers to listen to feedback from everyone in an organization, regardless of their role in the hierarchy.

Similarly, teams in a kanban workflow prioritize tasks based on production needs, instead of working to meet deadlines mandated by a higher-up. Each team operates with a high level of independence, communicating frequently with each other rather than depending only on managers. This leads to more leadership among low-ranking employees than many organizations and individuals are used to.

Getting into the kanban mindset

Knowing the principles of the kanban method is one thing — altering attitudes and behaviors to execute it is another. In 2016, Essential Kanban Condensed distilled the method into five practices for organizations. Think of these as the rules to follow:

Visualize workflow

For processes to be effectively conveyed to team members, work must be visualized. Visuals shouldn’t just indicate the types of tasks being performed but also what stage each project is in. The number one rule of kanban is to do this by capturing work processes and progress on a kanban board. We’ll discuss what this looks like in the next section.

Respond as needed

One of kanban’s defining traits is how it limits the amount of WIP at any given point. This maximizes productivity by concentrating on a single (or a few) items at once from start to finish. In a business culture obsessed with multitasking and doing more, more, and more, workers might find this type of direct attention to be counterintuitive and hard to accomplish, but it will increase overall output.

Keep the bigger picture in mind

Even though kanban focuses on completing one item at a time, work may speed up as the workflow becomes more efficient. Kanban also centers on repeatable processes, so teams fixated on processing items as needed should carve out time for feedback and strategy.

Define processes clearly

Since the kanban methodology advances items through stages, it’s important to specify what each stage is, when an item is ready to move to the next stage, and when a task is done. These definitions should be brief and simple enough for team members to repeat to each other.

Look for opportunities to improve processes

The primary benefit of kanban is how it encourages rhythm and flow in work processes. As you get more used to following these rhythms, be aware when projects seem to slow down, become complex, or when the flow feels interrupted. These are usually signs that a process can be improved. Find uncomplicated ways to incorporate such changes gradually to improve throughput.

How to implement the kanban method

The kanban board should encompass as much of a project as possible while still being easy to read. We’ll get into the specifics of how to design a kanban board in the next section. For now, here’s what to do before you make the board: 

Divide projects into stages

Projects should be broken down into multiple parts that are comprehensible enough to convey all the phases of production but broad enough to limit a workflow to just three major stages. These can be as straightforward as requested, in process, and complete. Each stage will form a column on the kanban board.

Break work up into steps

The more involved part of using kanban is breaking your work down into steps. Avoid going into the minutia; only record substantial processes that take a significant amount of time. Organize the steps sequentially so they can be followed effortlessly through task cards. For projects with many different types of tasks, color code and categorize the cards.

Set WIP limits for each stage

Dictate how much work can be in progress in any given stage, and communicate this to your team. Establishing these rules helps employees make decisions and operate more independently without creating bottlenecks. 

Move the cards

The real magic of kanban is seeing work move across the board. Whenever a worker finishes a task, they move its corresponding card on the kanban board to another column. When appropriate, they pull more work out of the backlog to complete.

Now that we have a high-level understanding of how the kanban method works, let’s look closer at the most important part — the kanban board.

Kanban is an innovative productivity system best known for how simply it visualizes workflow. Now that we know the principles behind the methodology, let’s look at how to design and manage a kanban board.

Components of a kanban board

If you look at a kanban board from a distance, you’ll see a series of columns filled with colorful cards. It might be hard to imagine how this helps organize individual workflows, let alone an entire organization or team. Look closer at the individual elements, and it will start to make sense.

Columns: the stages

The columns represent the stages of a project. Most kanban boards usually feature some variation of these three items:

1. To-do
2. In progress
3. Complete

However, different organizations have different needs. Some projects will require four or more stages. For example, a product design team may want six stages in their workflow:

1. Backlog: a complete but unordered list of tasks a team must complete to finish the project
2. Priority: the most important or pressing tasks workers have pulled from the backlog to begin working on
3. In process: a list of items currently being worked on
4. Review: items awaiting feedback from managers and other stakeholders
5. Ready: tasks approved for design
6. Completed: tasks awaiting user feedback

Kanban is flexible enough to accommodate as many stages as a project warrants. For simplicity, however, limit the number of stages as much as possible so the kanban board does not become too cluttered, defeating its purpose.  

Cards: the work

Each colorful card on a kanban board corresponds with a work item. They contain important information, such as a brief description of the task, deadlines, or estimated time to complete it.

The color of the card can be meaningful as well, depending on your projects. For example, each employee or team may select a color to associate their work with. If all of the items they’re responsible for are displayed on cards of that color, they can zero in on their tasks whenever they look at the board, no matter how much information is displayed. Colors can also denote the type of work, such as red for coding or green for research. Of course, the colors could be completely random if you want a bright and eye-catching board. 

Each column or stage should have a limit to the number of cards that can occupy it. These WIP limits ensure members of your team are always being productive but not hindering their performance by multitasking or taking on too much. 

Swimlanes

In addition to columns, some boards have horizontal rows that split a board into sections. These kanban swimlanes can neatly group types of tasks, as well as team or individual responsibilities. Swimlanes often serve the same function as color-coded cards but present the information even more clearly.

Managing kanban boards

Now that you know how to make a kanban board, here’s how to make sure your organization gets the most out of it:

Make it visible

Kanban means “signboard,” giving an idea of how it should be displayed — as prominently as possible. A well-made kanban board will give team members guidance on what they should do next, how work is progressing for everyone else, and why they’re doing what they’re doing. Even if you’re not artistically inclined, or you’re embarrassed about its design, the kanban board should be displayed as prominently as possible so everyone can access it effortlessly. 

The more prominent a kanban board is, the less likely employees will pester you with questions about processes. All the answers they seek should be on the board. You can even use it as a visual aid in meetings to discuss progress, issues, and accomplishments. Let the kanban board be the centerpiece of your workflow and everything your organization is doing.

Decide between a physical or digital kanban board

The original kanban boards mapped out workflows on chalk and whiteboards, often using colorful sticky notes as cards because they were easy to move from stage to stage. These days, workflow management software helps users create digital kanban boards with even more features and functionality. Both formats have benefits and drawbacks, as shown by countless kanban board examples.

Generally, physical boards are best for offices and give employees something tangible to look to for instruction. Digital kanban boards are better for remote teams or operations with no central location. Assess your needs to determine whether you should use a physical kanban board or software with kanban capabilities. You could also choose to have both. Even if everyone can look at a kanban board on their computers, updating a physical board is a great ritual to illustrate collective progress.

Use a kanban pull system

One of the most unique components of a kanban workflow is that teams only focus on work items as needed. A kanban pull system signals when teams should pull in new items to keep up with demand. Working this way ensures teams maintain a steady flow of productivity without the burden of more than they can handle. 

The WIP limits often signal when more work should be pulled in. For example, in a kanban workflow for product design, a WIP limit for the “in-process” stage might be five. When each card moves to the “done” stage, that prompts the team to begin working on another task so only five items are in process at any given time. 

Beyond workflow framing

The kanban method is an excellent tool for organizing and visualizing workflows, but they do more than streamline processes. As we know, WIP limits prevent individuals and teams from becoming overwhelmed. But how can managers ensure they meet customer demands while adhering to those limits? A kanban value stream map can clarify exactly how much they need to produce, helping teams find their ideal WIP limit. In turn, this signals whether or not to hire more employees or allocate resources to specific projects, based on the value doing so will provide.

With so many uses for kanban, its potential impact on an organization is astronomical. Read on to learn who this method helps most.

Kanban offers extensive benefits — and fortunately, the method applies to any type of repeatable process, regardless of industry or organization size. Here are some signs Kanban can help your workflow:

Shifting priorities 

The kanban methodology is excellent for organizations where needs change daily. One of its defining features is limiting production to only what’s necessary. When priorities change, it’s easy to finish work already in process and pull in new items as they’re completed. This flexibility keeps workflows running smoothly, even when they’re seemingly disrupted. 

Cycle times for each work item are much shorter, so it’s simple to accommodate unexpected changes. In more traditional workflows, a sudden priority shift may grind operations to a halt in preparation for the new work, causing workers to abandon products and tasks already underway.   

Quickly responding to customer requests

With kanban, organizations can process items faster than with traditional productivity systems. Each time a new customer request comes in, such as an order or a support issue, managers can quickly review to determine how soon it should be pulled into the workflow. Kanban shortens lead times while still enabling teams to finish processing the items currently in their queue. 

Smoother and more efficient workflows

Focus is the number one ingredient for handling repeatable processes, and that’s exactly what the kanban methodology helps with. The framework can align an entire organization on processing a few items at a time. This helps everyone complete work faster, eliminating bottlenecks, wasted time, and unnecessary effort. 

Backlogs or stalled work

If your organization’s work is challenging to start and complete, kanban workflows provide a framework to finally get it done. When rules limit the number of items that can be in process at any given time, introducing a backlogged item into the workflow is a guaranteed way to get it done without taking energy and resources away from other, more pressing tasks.

Kanban for every industry

Kanban entered the information age as the go-to workflow methodology for software developers. By 2010, most industries were finding ways to apply it, including the military. There are reasons it’s popular — kanban makes work easier, faster, and less stressful. 

Here’s an overview of how various teams and organizations can implement kanban:

Sales

Sales and kanban boards were practically made for each other. Each kanban column can represent a stage in the pipeline, such as “first engagement” or “product demo.” Naturally, each card can be an individual sales lead and contain important information about the prospect. Following the flow of leads through the stages also makes it effortless to track performance metrics. After a few weeks, you’ll have enough data to calculate KPIs like sales cycle time and closing rates.

The kanban workflow can also identify issues in your sales pipeline. Pay attention to how long cards stay in each column or how many leads drop off at particular stages. If few leads respond after the first engagement, that could be a sign to work on your messaging. If many leads tend to disappear after the product demo, it could indicate an issue with the presentation or the product itself.

IT department

As the need for technology services in the workplace increases, and problems become more complicated, IT teams face greater struggles to optimize their work capacity. Support requests can easily overwhelm small teams, but kanban boards help keep tickets organized. The pull systems inherent to kanban make it seamless to prioritize these requests or respond to emergencies while ensuring that everything is done promptly. Some IT teams find it beneficial to color code requests based on the type of work it involves. With kanban’s visualization, IT managers can see the bigger picture. Many similar issues on the board at the same time could indicate a systemic problem empowering the team to solve it before it becomes unmanageable. 

Human Resources

HR teams have demanding jobs — they’re responsible not only for recruiting new employees but also for addressing any personnel issues that may arise throughout employment. Kanban boards are great for both of these needs, helping HR professionals keep track of candidates as well as requests from employees and management.

Like the use of kanban in sales, HR departments can break the recruitment process up into stages and use cards to track individual candidates through interviews and vetting. The same can be done for new employee onboarding to ensure they fill all required paperwork and receive necessary information. Requests from management can be prioritized on kanban boards — the same way IT department tickets are.

Marketing

Marketing departments can have many projects underway at the same time, ranging from social media promotion and email campaigns to SEO content and advertising. Because the processes for these projects are so different, marketing departments might find it best to create kanban boards for each channel. Like in the sales example, each marketing strategy can be divided into stages that help managers track collateral development and deployment. Following WIP limits, creatives can generate new work as needed without wasting valuable time and mental energy creating content that will never see the light of day. 

Now that we’ve learned about the different ways the kanban method can be implemented in workflows, let’s get specific about how much they can improve performance.

Kanban isn’t just for visualizing workflows and improving efficiency — it can also show leaders how to structure their organizations. For example, the WIP limit shouldn’t be determined by a team’s capacity. Many formulas can help stakeholders find how many items the team needs to produce in a particular time frame to remain profitable or increase revenue. This leads to knowing how many items should be in each stage of production at a given time, revealing if more or different kinds of employees are needed to meet demands. 

Implementing the kanban methodology is also a way to gather data about your workflows.

Using kanban to track performance metrics

As the saying goes, “What gets measured gets managed.” Kanban workflows do more than provide a framework for getting tasks done efficiently — they’re also a vehicle for gathering performance data about teams, individual employees, and processes. 

Monitoring this information over time is imperative for improvement. These key performance indicators (KPIs) provide a productivity baseline. As the data become clear, leaders can figure out how to save time and money.

Here are some of the KPIs kanban can monitor:

Lead times and cycle times

Two of the most important workflow KPIs indicate how quickly work is getting done. Lead time is how long teams take to complete a task after the initial request, whereas cycle time is how long teams take to complete work once it’s in process.

How to measure it: The ticking clock calculating lead time should begin immediately after a request enters a kanban workflow — like when someone submits a support ticket to the IT department or a customer places an order. Cycle time is tracked from the moment the first employee begins work on an item to the moment it is completed. In our examples, it starts when the IT specialist first opens and reads the support ticket or when the fulfillment specialist first reviews and approves the order.

Why it matters: Time is money — the longer work takes to complete, the more expensive it is. Both long lead and cycle times indicate an issue with your process. It may be with the workflow structure or an employee’s performance. Comparing lead time to cycle time will clarify where the issue is. If a lead time is substantially longer than the cycle time, something is preventing employees from promptly beginning work on a project. An unusually long cycle time could indicate a breakdown in the workflow. Maybe employees are so busy that it takes them a long time to initially review a request. Or perhaps a work item takes longer to process because of a communication breakdown between departments.

Throughput

Throughput is the clearest indicator of a team’s efficiency because it shows how much work is delivered in a specific amount of time.

How to measure it: Count how many items were completed during a certain period, such as a week or a month. In manufacturing, the best throughput indicator is how many products are created. In a marketing workflow, you can calculate throughput by the number of leads generated. Throughput in a sales operation could be measured by the number of deals closed. 

Why it matters: Establishing an average for throughput is one of the best ways an organization can estimate its capacity. If a team processes five items one week, six the next, five the third week, and seven the fourth week, you can estimate that, on average, they can complete six items per week. This figure may determine how much work this team can handle as the company grows and how many new hires you might need to meet higher demand. Similarly, if you change your processes to improve efficiency, increased throughput will be a strong indicator the change was effective, and you’re on the right track.

How tracking KPIs with Kanban helps

Understanding exactly how your processes are performing provides more insight into your workflow and its impact. Some of these observations include the following:

Identifying bottlenecks

In a workflow, a bottleneck is a part of the process where work slows down and gets jammed because your team doesn’t have the capacity or resources to handle a task efficiently at one of the stages. It’s up to you to figure out how to remove bottlenecks so work continues flowing smoothly again. Otherwise, lost productivity can cost substantial time and money.

The telltale signs of a bottleneck are slower lead and cycle times — and reduced throughput. You can identify exactly where in the process the bottleneck is by looking at the cycle times of each stage in the kanban workflow. In an order fulfillment operation, a long cycle time in the packing stage shows something is off about your packing process or the material. A long cycle time in the research stage of a help desk workflow indicates other departments are slow to respond to IT professionals. Knowing exactly where slowdowns are happening helps everyone take action to correct the problem.

Predicting completion dates

One of the biggest questions raised in any organization is when something will be done. The answer is incredibly important for clients and customers because they are paying for products or services. But an answer gives everyone in the organization greater peace of mind as well. Using long-term data from lead times, cycle times, and throughputs helps organizations estimate when items will be finished based on experience. This applies to when a customer might receive products, as well as when employees can expect a work item in the queue.

As popular as kanban has become, it’s not an ideal workflow methodology for every project because it’s best for repeatable processes. Fortunately, it’s not the only tool available. Many organizations use other methods in tandem with Kanban or switch between workflow methods for different projects. 

Two of the most popular techniques used alongside kanban are scrum and lean. 

What is scrum?

The scrum we’re talking about isn’t the kind in rugby — but it is similar to the sport.

Like kanban, scrum is a workflow framework that helps organizations develop, deliver, and maintain complex projects easily and efficiently. While it’s especially popular for product development in the software and tech industries, scrum can apply to sales, marketing, research, and science. Unlike kanban, however, scrum is designed for teams of 10 or less, rather than large organizations.

In the scrum framework, workers break projects down into smaller goals that can be completed in short sprints or stages that last up to a month. Like in rugby, all the team members pile on to the sprint goal, working together to achieve it. Teams also meet once a day for 15 minutes or less to update each other and assess overall progress on a project. After each sprint, two meetings follow — one to receive feedback from leadership and stakeholders and an internal workflow reflection meeting so teams can find ways to improve for the next sprint. 

The principles of scrum

At its core, scrum handles complex projects without a cumbersome workflow. Here are six principles to keep in mind while following the method:

Use the empirical process

The information age has transformed work into systems that can be studied and improved — almost like a science. Stay observant while following the scrum methodology to keep work transparent, be more adaptable to challenges, and better evaluate performance and processes.

Teams are self-organizing

With scrum meetings minimized to 15 minutes or less per day, team members mostly act independently during sprints. This makes room for organic optimization of team roles and contributions rather than rigid top-down assignments from managers.

Collaborate as much as possible

Daily scrum meetings are the perfect venue for exchanging feedback with team members during sprints. Be open to sharing — and receiving — valuable ideas that can make sprints more successful. 

Prioritize based on value

Scrum requires a high level of adaptability because so much can change throughout a sprint. While priorities are likely to shift daily, adjusting them also keeps the goal in mind. 

Timebox work and meetings

Timeboxing allocates a fixed time period for a planned activity. Sprints imply a disorganized, mad race to the finish line — something that can be part of many scrum workflows. However, the daily scrum meetings are an anchor. By ritualizing meetings and being respectful of everyone’s time, teams get the most out of each interaction and each workday. 

Keep scrum an iterative method

While priorities change and goals are revised, scrum itself is iterative, meaning its processes are repeated over and over in a cycle to create the best product possible.

You may have noticed some similarities between kanban and scrum. But it’s not always best to think in terms of kanban vs scrum as they can complement each other when needed. 

What is lean?

Kanban and scrum apply to projects and workflow, but lean is a methodology for creating new businesses and products. The goal is to shorten development time by determining as quickly as possible whether a business model or value proposition for a new product is viable.

Lean is a process-driven approach that emphasizes experimentation and evaluation rather than goal achievement. It’s best understood as a learning framework rather than a workflow — though it does break down the learning process into steps and tasks that guide teams and stakeholders through a flow of activities. 

Principles of lean

Like scrum, lean operates on six principles:

Make the goal a minimum viable product

You’ve probably heard this term before — it’s exactly what the name implies: a version of a new product that brings the most return with the least amount of effort. This return can be profits or data used for ongoing product development and refinement. Oftentimes, it’s both.

Speed up product development with split testing

Split testing is an experimental method that releases multiple versions of the same product to different customers and audiences at the same time. Stakeholders observe how the product is received, gaining insight into what users want and value. 

Focus on actionable metrics

Actionable metrics are directly tied to revenue or success and contrast starkly with vanity metrics. Whether or not a metric is actionable often depends on how it’s valued by its tracker. For example, both the owner and marketing team of an e-commerce site may track the number of page visitors per day. This would be a vanity metric for the owner since page visits don’t always translate to revenue, but it’s an actionable metric for the marketing team because it validates how strong their campaigns are. 

Embrace pivots

A pivot allows organizations to test new theories about their products or strategy. It’s most often a response to the failure of the original business model or product value proposition. Some of the most successful companies in the world were founded through pivoting. One of the most famous examples in recent history was when Odeo, a floundering podcast subscription platform, rebranded as Twitter to avoid competition with iTunes.  

Use innovation accounting to assess value

In startup culture, the metrics that usually indicate success (revenue, market share, customers, etc.) are often unavailable, simply because the company hasn’t launched. Innovation accounting provides a framework for tracking less tangible progress that indicates success and helps teams focus on what matters most to their business. 

Work in an endless loop

We have the circle of life — scrum has the loop of build, measure, and learn. Teams work quickly to build a minimum viable product, measure its impact, and learn from the trial. In this way, all work can be understood as a learning cycle. 

When it comes to kanban vs lean, the two are so different that they don’t compete with each other. They are part of the larger agile family of methodologies.

Kanban is often associated with a larger framework called agile, as the methodologies were developed in tandem, often in response to one another. In the kanban vs agile debate, it’s not that one is better than the other but that they each apply to specific situations. 

Before we explore the relationship between kanban and agile, let’s define agile.

What is agile?

Agile is an overarching framework for collaborative project management and product development. It helps teams self-organize to achieve goals while adapting to constant change. Both scrum and lean derive from agile, which also interplays with kanban. 

As its name implies, agile’s goal is to facilitate successful creation in the turbulent and frequently changing conditions of modern work. Like kanban, scrum, and lean, agile originally addressed the challenges of software development, but it has since found applications in manufacturing, sales, business management, and organizational structure. 

Agile values 

A group of 17 technologists published the Agile Manifesto in 2001 to address the challenges of software development. They defined agile through four primary values and 12 principles. These values demonstrate agile’s concerns, which often starkly contrast to those of older frameworks. 

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Agile recognizes the importance of unique experiences and skill sets. The framework encourages team members to contribute to projects based on their strengths rather than try to plug into incompatible roles. 

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Agile facilitates fast development cycles to create minimally viable products. This is different from traditional software development models, where teams spend an inordinate amount of time writing long system design documents with extraneous, potentially out-of-date information that delays progress. Agile pushes teams to focus on development and produce minimal architectural documentation that helps other programmers understand how the system was created. 

Collaboration instead of negotiation

Agile favors win-win scenarios over one-sided successes.

Responding to change instead of following a plan

As an iterative framework, agile prizes adaptation through processes instead of rigidly working toward a preconceived outcome. Since agile helps teams pioneer innovations, following a plan based on a flawed premise hinders success.

The principles of agile

The Agile Manifesto also outlined 12 principles to help teams succeed in product development:

Simplicity is key

Creating a minimally viable product requires cutting anything nonessential. 

Emphasize customer satisfaction

Customer acquisition is one of the most important metrics for startups. Agile recognizes that engaging customers with high-quality products or updates is the best way to build something over time and ensure its success. 

Deliver frequently

Customers are most engaged and satisfied with regular updates and developments. Their responses also inform teams how to proceed in the future.

Expect and welcome change

Because of agile’s iterative and learning-based approach, teams must strategically pivot to respond to new information and remain competitive.

Collaborate across silos

Creative, strategic, and business-minded team members should work together daily. Agile recognizes the best success comes from a balance of perspectives. Projects devised only to increase profits without real worth for users are doomed to fail. Similarly, projects that give away too much value without a revenue model will never make any money.

Honor enthusiasm and motivation

In agile workflows, managers recognize natural leaders and create an environment that supports their needs. 

Meet face-to-face

Scrum, lean, and kanban all approach this principle differently, but all agile methodologies recognize the importance of consistent interfacing. 

Make a minimal viable product the primary success metric

In the beginning, startups often have no revenue or customers to measure success with. Therefore, making a minimal viable product is the top goal, since that’s what can eventually generate revenue. 

Develop sustainably

“Slow and steady wins the race” is a popular mantra, and agile agrees with at least the second half of it. Ideally, teams should pace themselves so they can maintain the same cyclical flow of work indefinitely.

Prioritize excellence

Pay attention to technical and design improvements to enhance agility. Sometimes small tweaks in these areas can lead to major competitive advantages. 

Allow teams to self-organize

Agile recognizes that individuals function well when they use their natural skills and follow their enthusiasm to create the best products. 

Reflect on progress and process

Teams should regularly meet to analyze what they’ve accomplished and find ways to improve their workflows. 

By better understanding the agile framework, it’s easier to see where the kanban methodology fits into it. Now, let’s learn about some of the tools that can implement these methodologies in your day-to-day operations.

Workflow management systems have come a long way since they were first developed — that’s especially true of kanban. You can always create physical boards to keep teams on track and display project status. But as more and more organizations move to remote work, digital kanban boards make a lot of sense, especially as online kanban software offers even more capabilities than their analog counterparts.

Benefits of kanban software

Here are just a few of the benefits your team can expect from the best kanban software:

Universal access with immediate updates

Unlike physical kanban boards, kanban software allows users to view and update projects from anywhere they have internet access. Changes display instantly for every user on the team.

Automated processes and notifications

Notifications about progress updates, new assignments, and other workflow elements can automatically generate emails to appropriate users to inform them about important changes.

More information in one place

Physical kanban cards have limited space, but digital cards can include as much information about a project as managers want. Many platforms also allow users to add links and attachments to these cards.

Performance measures and report generating

One of the biggest features of online kanban software is the ability to track performance metrics, such as cycle time. This makes it incredibly easy to generate reports that illustrate team performance and highlight areas to improve. 

Capabilities to look for in kanban software

Most workflow management software is based on the agile framework. However, not all of them have kanban’s qualities. Look for these features in online workflow platforms:

Create columns and cards

Most importantly, the software needs to allow you to create and view work in the same style as kanban. You should be able to set up columns for project stages, turn tasks into movable cards, and draw swimlanes. Additionally, you need to be able to establish rules about the number of cards in each stage (for WIP limits), assign tasks, and link cards. 

Analyze workflow data

To improve anything, you have to be able to measure it. Kanban helps teams identify bottlenecks, but workflow software can go one step further and alert you to issues.

Scale for multiple projects

Organizations are busier than ever, so it’s important to have multiple kanban boards for different departments or projects. Look for software that allows you to scale across your entire organization.

Jotform was made for agile workflows

Jotform Boards make it incredibly simple to build robust workflow systems that keep teams functioning at their best. Automated features like notifications and form assignments are built into the platform. You can customize each of these forms and notifications to contain as much or as little information as you want — exactly like cards on a kanban board. You can also program conditional logic to automate the flow of work items through multiple stages of a product.

Jotform Boards provides a powerful Kanban-based task management solution, enabling users to seamlessly convert form submissions into structured tasks. The intuitive drag-and-drop Kanban interface allows for effortless organization and tracking, providing a clear visual representation of each step in the workflow. This structured approach helps teams manage tasks efficiently without switching between multiple tools, keeping everything centralized within Jotform. Additionally, with access to over 1000 Jotform Board templates, users can quickly set up boards tailored to their specific needs, saving time and effort.

Customization and collaboration are at the core of Jotform Boards. Users can personalize task cards by adding priority levels, tags, due dates, and descriptions, tailoring the board to their specific processes. Real-time collaboration features enable team members to assign tasks, leave comments, and track all updates through the activity log. These capabilities ensure smooth communication and accountability within teams, making it easier to manage projects efficiently. By integrating task management directly into Jotform, users can process submissions seamlessly, reducing dependency on external tools and streamlining their workflow.

Besides all that, Jotform integrates with several kanban-ready workflow software platforms, such as Trello and Asana, that can turn your forms into stunning kanban boards. Also, Jotform extends its reach through Zapier, which integrates seamlessly with apps specifically designed for kanban workflows.

The future of Kanban

Kanban is one of the oldest workflow methodologies still used today — and its continued evolution is helping some of the greatest pioneers and innovators in the tech, manufacturing, and marketing industries achieve bigger goals. After completely transforming Toyota as a company, the workflow methodology created a new standard for performance for automakers and helped the software industry become what it is today. Now, advanced platforms help organizations of every type and size implement kanban into their workflows.

Kanban isn’t just a tool that helps organizations do more — it raises the bar on quality and goal achievement with less effort and stress. What are you ready to improve?