Kanban Examples - Kanban explained with examples

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Kanban is a lean manufacturing method which allowed companies like Toyota outperform their competitors and gain immense growth. Kanban principles are quite simple and are really easy to implement in nearly every type of business. In this article we present Kanban examples and show how to start Kanban in a minute with Kanban Tool.

What is Kanban?

Kanban is a visual process management system that gives answers to what, when and how to produce. The word Kanban comes from Japanese and it means "signboard". Kanban was developed and implemented for the first time in 1940s in Toyota production system. Nowadays, it has spread around the globe and is expending to other areas like project management, software development and many, many others. Kanban method is probably the most effective tool to improve your business productivity and effectiveness.

There are just three Kanban rules:

  • 1. Visualize your workflow
  • 2. Limit WIP (work in progress)
  • 3. Analyze and improve the process

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Kanban is really easy to implement no matter how complicated the process is. Creating good workflow takes time and practice, but there are few basic examples you can begin with. The perfect solution is to start with predefined Kanban board examples like KanbanTool has.

Basic Kanban example

This is a very basic workflow, suitable for simple personal work and time management. It has three self-descriptive states:

Basic Kanban example
  • To do to store and organize things you want to work on.
  • In progress with limit to keep you from doing too many things at the same time.
  • Done for reference and to track your performance.

Time driven Kanban example

Time driven version of basic workflow. Works best if you plan in a time based manner. The board layout looks as follow:

Time driven Kanban board example
  • To do
  • Scheduled with three categories:
    • Soon - things to do in near future
    • Tomorrow - limited number of things scheduled for tomorrow
    • Today - things to do today with limit of 7 cards to keep you focused and organized
  • In progress with limit to keep you from doing too many things at the same time.
  • Done for reference and to track your performance.

Event driven Kanban example

Event driven version of basic workflow. Works best if some external event (like approval etc.) determines which tasks are ready to be worked on. The board layout looks as follow:

Event driven Kanban board example
  • To do with three categories:
    • Backlog - things to do at some time in future
    • Waiting - limited number of selected tasks waiting for some event to happen (i.e. approval)
    • Ready - things ready to start working on
  • In progress with limit to keep you from doing too many things at the same time.
  • Done for reference and to track your performance.

Kanban Tool is a visual management application that allows you to easily modify the default Kanban board template to better fit your needs. Sign up to Kanban Tool and start your first Kanban project to visualize your workflow and empower your business productivity.

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