Kanban Principles and Practices (2024)

Since Kanban was first developed as a project management framework in the 1940s in Japan, its use has evolved. Initially, it was used specifically in the context of ‘just in time’ manufacturing and waste control. Now, the approach is popular with all kinds of industries and applications.You can see Kanban being used in marketing and sales as well as software development.

Because technology has moved on, so has the way we use Kanban. In particular, we needed a renewed approach to what it is to apply and use Kanban in the modern day. As a result, now the community is guided by the core 4 Kanban principles and 6 practices. Curious to see what they are? Let’s discuss this in the post!

What to expect?

Explanation of the modern Kanban principles and practices, plus visual examples of how these Kanban principles and practices look in real life.

What Is Kanban?

Today Kanban is a popular Agile project management framework. It represents projects visually via a series of cards displayed on the Kanban board. Many people find this approach intuitive and easy to use.

The main strength of Kanban is in the visualization aspect. By seeing all the work in one place, the team can quickly understand their progress, what is going well, and what bottlenecks are present. As such, there is much more transparency in the work itself and it becomes much easier to solve the issues the team may encounter.

History of Kanban

Kanban is a Japanese word that literally means ‘visual sign,’ ‘visual card,’ or ‘signboard.’ Japanese industrial engineer Taiichi Ohno developed Kanban at the end of the 1940s. Ohno worked at Toyota, the car maker, and had been looking for ways to optimize manufacturing processes at the firm.

It was used initially for managing inventory and minimizing waste by ordering stock when items dropped below a certain threshold. Since then, Kanban has been applied as a Lean project management methodology to various sectors and is particularly popular today with software developers.

Kanban principles and practices have been successfully implemented across various industries, including manufacturing, healthcare, project management, marketing, advertising, and education. Organizations have achieved greater efficiency, reduced waste, and improved overall outcomes by visualizing workflows, limiting work in progress, and focusing on continuous improvement.

David J Anderson pioneered the broader adoption of the Kanban methodology to reflect technological advancements, project management, and new industries. His 2010 bookKanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Businessdefined five core properties that he thought characterized successful Kanban implementations. Since then, these five properties have expanded into four fundamental Kanban principles and six practices we are going to discuss next.

Discover the basics of Kanban, its principles, and essential tools like project visualization, WIP limits, and feedback loops in the Ultimate Kanban Project Management Guide.

The 5 core properties of Kanban

David Anderson’s initial five core Kanban properties were:

1. Visualize the workflow
2. Limit Work in Progress (WIP)
3. Manage flow
4. Make process policies explicit
5. Improve collaboratively

We mention them here because it is interesting to see how these formed the basis of – and evolved into – the kanban principles and practices we will explore in more detail below.

The 4 Kanban principles

The four principles of Kanban are:

1. Start with what you do now

Kanban recognizes the value of your existing processes and practices. At the start of any project, change management professionals will conduct a discovery phase to review your current process and understand it. It is the goal of Kanban to build on this process and improve it instead of bringing a whole new set of rules out of the bat.

This allows you to thoroughly review your workflow, roles, responsibilities, titles, communications, and more. Thus maximizing efficiencies and cost savings as well as focusing on where improvements need to be made.

2. Agree to pursue incremental, evolutionary change

The concept of continuous improvement is critical to Kanban and is a quality it shares with Agile and Scrum methodologies. Delivering change in small, steady increments is also shared by these project management approaches. Doing so helps minimize disruption and make the change process more manageable.

Significant changes are more challenging to implement and likely to meet internal resistance. Senior management may be concerned about costs, while project teams may feel that changes to working practices may impede their productivity. Kanban recognizes this, emphasizing small, continuous, incremental change instead.

3. Respect the current process, roles, responsibilities, titles

Being respectful helps reinforce the idea that Kanban will not be overly disruptive or completely change established operating models. This is particularly important if those models are effective. This approach positions Kanban as a compromising and collaborative means of improving legacy processes without fundamentally disrupting an organization’s operations.

This whole approach helps to gain support for Kanban in an environment where various teams are attached to established practices. It is beneficial in larger organizations where change is slower, and there are more people to convince.

4. Encourage acts of leadership at all levels in your organization

As part of Kanban’s emphasis on collaboration, anyone can take ownership of and address an issue. With the transparency Kanban provides, any team member should be able to take action and justify it with solid data to back them up. This encouraging culture helps to empower team members to take the lead, take risks, and grow professionally and personally.

The 6 Kanban practices

In contrast to a time-limited Agile methodology like Scrum, where sprints follow strict schedules, Kanban operates on a pull system, meaning that you only start work when there is demand for a specific deliverable. From this concept – and David Anderson’s five core properties – we now have the following 6 Kanban practices:

1. Visualize (the work, the workflow, and the business risks)

Improving visibility in your workflow is crucial for identifying areas needing improvement.

Kanban boards display which work items are in process, which are done, and which have not started. This helps you and your team to understand what it takes to get an item from request to completion and to uncover where you need to make adjustments to optimize your workflow.

Kanban boards are similar in concept to dashboards for project work, where the intention is to give visibility to as much information as possible in a format that is easy to understand.

As you can see below, Kanban boards use columns to represent the process steps of each team and swimlanes to categorize tasks so that it is easier to read. Additionally, some tools offer secondary processes to track the progress of subtasks. This is especially useful for teams working with larger items or more complicated process steps.

2. Limit Work in Progress (WIP)

The ultimate goal of using Kanban boards is to help make projects as efficient as possible by cutting out wasted time and resources. Kanban WIP limits are vital because they set the maximum amount of work that can exist in a workflow status or swimlane.

WIP stands for “Work In Progress” and limits the number of work items in the chosen area of the Kanban board.

This enables a pull system where new work is only ‘pulled’ in when there is enough capacity to handle it. WIP limits are represented as numbers on Kanban board statuses (columns) or swimlanes (rows) as in this example below:

3. Manage flow

The Kanban board enables you to observe how work moves from one status (column) to the next. Focusing on the flow of tasks through the statuses on the board highlights any potential bottlenecks. It allows managers to focus on smoothing interruptions in the normal flow and seeing where more resources may be needed.

Additionally, more advanced Kanban users take advantage of the Flow metrics to better understand their processes. By tracking them, they are able to forecast when items will be completed based on their previous work data. This gives another layer of insight into the process and is particularly useful for those who need to report on progress.

In Teamhood, for example, you can see both raw data for the Flow metrics as well as an intelligence layer that forecasts the completion date for your tasks based on previous performance. And it has a fun name you may often hear at the office – ‘When will it be done?’

4. Make policies explicit

Define, publish, and share your processes and policies. That way, everyone on the team understands how work is done and what your main goals are. This helps ensure everyone is moving in the same direction when suggesting improvements.

Doing this should also help to keep team discussions more dispassionate and objective, preventing emotion and subjective views from influencing the decision process.

You should also consider the placement of these documents. One option would be putting them right into your Kanban board tool to ensure it is easily accessible and can be found quickly when needed.

5. Implement feedback loops

The Kanban method encourages small, continuous, incremental, and evolutionary changes. However, knowing which changes are needed depends on establishing reliable feedback loops.

In Kanban, there are several ways to provide feedback to your teams:

• You have daily standup meetings where you can bring up short remarks or concerns.
• You usually review the work of each other, thus giving you an opportunity for feedback
• Lastly, you have retrospective meetings for teams/projects. Allowing you to bring up inefficiencies and suggest solutions.

Keep in mind, that while there are specific meetings to be held at a certain time, the feedback should be timely. So do not wait for the meeting in case you feel it is urgent.

Vice versa, do not feel like you have to come up with something if everything is going great.

6. Improve collaboratively, evolve experimentally

We know that collaborative improvement and evolution are essential concepts for Kanban. In his book, David Anderson discusses how important it is for teams to have shared knowledge and understanding of problems. He recommends adopting a scientific model of experimentation, analysis, and improvement.

The models he suggests considering include:

• The Theory of Constraints
• The Theory of Profound Knowledge
• The Lean Economic Model

Using one of these proven models makes it easier to measure outcomes and mitigate change risks. If, however, you do not feel like implementing that, do what works for your team to continue improving and evolving.

Implementing Kanban successfully in your organization

Understanding these Kanban principles and practices is a great way to help see how you could effectively implement Kanban in your organization. However, you probably have more questions if you’re just starting with Kanban.

One of the best places to start is by browsing our fast-growing selection ofKanban resources and research.

Alternatively, find out more about how Teamhood’s flexible Kanban system works, or book a demo to see how it could work for you: