Kanban board

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Introduction

According to Wikipedia (Jan 2019), “Kanban boards visually depict work at various stages of a process using cards to represent work items and columns to represent each stage of the process. Cards are moved from left to right to show progress and to help coordinate teams performing the work. A Kanban board may be divided into horizontal "swimlanes" representing different kinds of work or different teams performing the work. Kanban boards can be used in knowledge work or for manufacturing processes. Simple boards have columns for "waiting", "in progress" and "completed" (or "to-do", "doing", and "done"). Complex Kanban boards can be created that subdivide "in progress" work into multiple columns to visualise the flow of work across a whole value stream map.”

“Items on a list are each treated as "cards." Offline versions often use Post-It Notes moved across a series of bins. It's based on a process developed for manufacturing, but widely adopted by the lean software development community. Cards might represent a feature, which is moved across a board to represent its flow through development, review, testing, and deployment. Digital tools often allow attachments to these cards: images, links, additional lists, a person assigned to the task, etc., and many have additional tools for giving you a fuller picture of how tasks are moving across a workflow.” ([https://opensource.com/alternatives/trello 5 open source alternatives to Trello] (retr. Jan 16 2019).

Every kanban system is unique. Examples:

Simple kanban board by Jeff Lasovski
Kanban board example
A Kanban board in software development

Software

To implement a digital kanban board, on could either use standard software, e.g. a flexible "todo", productivity tool or some note taking software.

There is also more or less specialised software, some of which also can be used for the similar Bullet journal approach.

Bibliography and links

Anderson, David J.; Carmichael, Andy (2016). Essential Kanban Condensed. Seattle, WA: Lean Kanban University Press. ISBN 978-0-9845214-2-5.

Kanban Guide: Demand Scheduling for Lean Manufacturing, Compiled by Nilesh R Arora. Add ValueConsulting Inc., India 2001, S. 11.

J. M. Gross, Kenneth, R. McInnis: Kanban Made Simple—Demystifying and Applying Toyota's Legendary ManufacturingProcess. Amacom, USA 2003, S. 50. ISBN 0-8144-0763-3