What is Kanban & Why Should You Be Interested?

Kanban is a great method of organizing, improving and finishing work. It has been first developed at Toyota, to manage the stock and production of car parts. The aim of Kanban is to create a complete workflow transparency, so that everyone in an organization – from production line worker to the CEO – gain a better understanding of the process they're involved in. This way each employee could see and improve the way his effort influences the entire process.

Kanban for Teams

The way this works in practice, is that all tasks are being visualized on a visual board. The board is divided into as many columns as there is stages in the process. The tasks are being moved into the appropriate columns as they get moved along in process. The key to doing Kanban right is applying Work-In-Progress limits to the columns – only so many tasks can be done at one time in order to ensure maximum completion and fast delivery.

Thanks to this visualization, the team achieves three things:

• They see the items that are in progress
• Teams can follow the wok that no-one has gotten into yet and that needs doing
• They get a clear picture of how efficient (or not) they are with the processes

Personal Kanban

When you take the way various companies (from industrial production, through software development to financial organizations) visualize their processes to improve it, and apply it to the way you organize your personal tasks – you'll get Personal Kanban. Simply the thought of having every of your to-dos mapped out and noted, will make it easier for you to concentrate and get things done one by one. The road to saving your time, effort and getting more done in a shorter time is open!

Read in detail about a Personal Kanban Board »