Kanban project management means putting all your work where the team can see it and capping how much is in progress, so new work starts only when someone has capacity. Many introductions stop at the board: three columns and some sticky notes. The board is the easy part, though. What changes how a team works is the limit on work in progress, and few guides explain how to set one.
This guide covers what Kanban is, where it came from, how a board works, and the principles and practices in the official Kanban Guide. It then shows how to calculate a WIP limit from your team’s own data, with a worked example, and which Kanban metrics are worth tracking.
What is Kanban?
Kanban is a method for managing work that shows all tasks on a board, caps the number in progress, and lets people pull the next item when they have room. The word has two related meanings, and it helps to separate them.
- In manufacturing, a kanban is a signal. The Lean Enterprise Institute defines it as a device that authorizes the production or movement of items in a pull system, and notes that the Japanese term means “sign” or “signboard.”
- In knowledge work, Kanban is a management method. The Official Guide to the Kanban Method says it is “not a methodology nor a process framework,” but an approach applied to the way you already work.
That second point separates Kanban project management from most project methods. It brings no new roles, phases, or fixed schedule, so you start from your current process and improve it step by step, which suits teams with a steady stream of incoming requests.
Where Kanban came from
Kanban began on the factory floor at Toyota. Executive Taiichi Ohno took the idea of the supermarket from photos of American stores, where goods sit on shelves in set locations for customers to take, and Toyota installed its first supermarket in its main plant’s machine shop in 1953, according to the Lean Enterprise Institute. Kanban cards, which state which parts are used, how many, where, and when, made just in time production possible, and Toyota adopted the kanban system at all its plants in 1963.
The core idea carried over to office work: nothing is produced until the next step signals that it needs it. On a factory line that keeps parts from piling up between stations, and in a project team it does the same for half finished work sitting between people.
How a Kanban board works
A Kanban board shows each stage of your workflow as a column and each piece of work as a card. Cards move from left to right as work progresses. Here is a Kanban example for a five person client services team:
| Column | What it holds | Rule for entering |
|---|---|---|
| Backlog | All requests, not yet agreed | Anyone can add a card |
| Ready | Work the team has committed to | Brief, owner, and due date are clear |
| In progress | Work being done now | Pulled by a person with free capacity |
| Review | Work waiting for a check | The author has finished the first version |
| Done | Delivered work | Accepted by the reviewer or client |
The last column of the table matters as much as the first. Those entry rules are what the Kanban Guide calls making policies explicit, and they let everyone see what must be true before a card moves. Your columns should match how work really flows, so a marketing team’s Kanban board will look different from a developer’s. If you want to try one before choosing software, our free Kanban board template for Excel is a simple way to start.
Kanban principles and practices
The Kanban Guide lists six principles in two groups, plus six general practices. Some summaries show four principles, so you may see shorter lists elsewhere.
Change management principles
- Start with what you do now
- Agree to pursue improvement through evolutionary change
- Encourage acts of leadership at all levels
Service delivery principles
- Understand and focus on customer needs and expectations
- Manage the work and let people organize themselves around it
- Regularly review the network of services and its policies to improve outcomes
The six general practices
- Visualize the work and the workflow.
- Limit work in progress to balance utilization with the flow of work.
- Manage flow so that work finishes smoothly and predictably at a sustainable pace.
- Make policies explicit so that everyone knows the rules for moving work.
- Implement feedback loops through the board, metrics, and regular meetings.
- Improve collaboratively and evolve experimentally, using small changes you can roll back.
The second practice runs against instinct. Keeping everyone fully occupied can feel like good management, but the guide warns that with resources fully utilized there is no slack and the result is “very poor flow,” much like a freeway at rush hour. That is why Kanban asks a person with a free hour to help finish a card rather than start a new one.
How to set WIP limits from your own data
A WIP limit is the maximum number of cards allowed in a column or across the board. When a column is full, nobody starts anything new, and the team helps clear what is already there. The introductions we read give no formula, and the usual advice is to start somewhere and adjust. A better starting point comes from Little’s Law, which links three averages in a stable system:
Here is how that works for the five person team above. The figures are illustrative. Over the last 20 working days, the team finished 40 cards, and a count each morning showed about 16 cards between Ready and Done.
So the team can deliver in 5 days without working any faster, as long as it starts less: 10 cards at a time instead of 16. Split the limit across columns according to where work waits, such as 7 for In progress and 3 for Review, and keep a closer watch on any column that stays full.
Treat the number as a first experiment. Little’s Law describes averages in a stable system, so it will not predict any single card, and very large cards will distort it. The sensitivity line shows why the limit has to be reviewed: if the delivery rate drops, the same 10 cards take longer. Give the limit a month, then recalculate from the new data.
Kanban metrics and formulas
The Kanban Guide names three core metrics: lead time, delivery rate, and WIP. The first three rows below use its definitions, and the last two are common additions that help with day to day decisions.
| Metric | How to calculate it | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Lead time | Completion date − commitment date | How long a client or colleague waits |
| Delivery rate | Items completed ÷ time period | How much the team finishes |
| WIP | Count of items in the system at a set time | How much is open right now |
| Age of work in progress | Today − date the item started | Which cards are stuck before they are late |
| Flow efficiency | Hours actively worked ÷ elapsed working hours × 100 | How much of the wait is spent idle |
Flow efficiency is the one a time tracker makes easy. Say a card took 8 working days, which is 64 working hours, and the timesheets show 12 hours logged against it. Flow efficiency is 12 ÷ 64 = 19%. For about four fifths of its life, nobody was working on that card, so look in the queues before asking anyone to work harder.
The guide also recommends looking at the spread of lead times rather than the average alone, with the aim of narrowing the range. A team that delivers everything in 4 to 6 days is easier to rely on than one that averages 5 but ranges from 1 to 20.
Kanban vs Scrum
Kanban and Scrum are two approaches often compared under agile project management. Scrum is defined by the Scrum Guide, and the main differences are in structure.
| Aspect | Kanban | Scrum |
|---|---|---|
| Rhythm | Continuous flow | Fixed Sprints of one month or less |
| Roles | No new roles required | Product Owner, Scrum Master, Developers |
| Limiting work | WIP limits per column or board | The amount selected for the Sprint |
| Changing work | New items can enter when capacity opens | The Sprint Goal stays fixed during a Sprint |
| Best fit | Steady stream of requests of varying priority | Product work that benefits from fixed cycles |
You can also combine them: because Kanban starts from what you do now, a Scrum team can add a board and WIP limits inside its Sprints.
Common Kanban mistakes
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Using a board with no WIP limits
A board without limits is a to do list with columns. It shows the pile of work but does nothing to shrink it, so it gives lead times no reason to change.
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Setting the limit once and forgetting it
Team size and delivery rate change. Recalculate from recent data, and treat every full column as a question about where work is stuck.
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Breaking the limit for every urgent request
If each request counts as urgent, the limit means nothing. The Kanban Guide describes classes of service for this: agreed criteria for the few items that may pass a full lane.
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Mixing very different card sizes
A one hour fix and a three week project cannot share a useful average. Split large work into smaller cards, or track the two on separate boards.
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Keeping policies in people’s heads
If nobody has written down what Ready or Done means, cards move on opinion, and work bounces back. Put the rules on the board.
Running Kanban in actiTIME
A board shows where work is and a time tracker shows what it cost, and in actiTIME they are the same tool. Its Kanban board sits beside the list view of tasks, with custom workflow statuses as your columns, so the same tasks people log hours against are the cards they move.
Tasks carry deadlines, and on paid versions and the free trial they also carry estimates, priorities, and custom fields. The Estimated vs. Actual Time Report shows the variance between estimates and tracked time. That gives you the hours for flow efficiency without a separate spreadsheet. For setup steps, see our guide to the actiTIME Kanban system, and to compare options, see our list of visual project management tools.
Now we can better predict future project requirements
Our company needed a simple way of tracking time used on multiple projects – and actiTIME fit the need. Its interface is simple and easy to maintain. We use the application for time management, task estimation and also to communicate deadline information to our team members. Now having actiTIME we can better predict future project requirements!
FAQ
What are the six rules of Kanban?
The six rules commonly attributed to Taiichi Ohno come from manufacturing: the later process takes only what the kanban shows, the earlier process produces only what the kanban shows, nothing is made or moved without a kanban, a kanban stays attached to the goods, defective items are not passed on, and reducing the number of kanban makes problems easier to see. The Kanban Guide’s six practices are a separate list for knowledge work.
Why is it called Kanban?
The word is Japanese for “sign” or “signboard,” after the cards Toyota used to signal when parts were needed.
What is Kanban vs Jira?
Kanban is a method, and Jira is a software product from Atlassian that offers Kanban boards among its features. You can run Kanban with Jira, with another tool, or with sticky notes on a wall.
Is Kanban lean or Six Sigma?
Kanban comes from lean. It grew out of the Toyota Production System, and its focus on pull and reducing waiting time is a lean idea. Six Sigma is a separate approach focused on reducing variation and defects, though some organizations use the two together.
What is a simple example of Kanban?
A team with three columns, To Do, Doing, and Done, and a limit of 3 cards in Doing. Nobody starts a fourth card until one of the three moves to Done, so people finish work before beginning more.
Start less, finish more
Kanban project management takes one sentence to describe: show the work and pull the next item only when the limit leaves room. The value comes from that limit, so set it from your own numbers rather than a guess. Count your cards, measure your delivery rate, set a first WIP limit with Little’s Law, and review it after a month.
To see your tasks on a board with real hours behind them, start a free trial of actiTIME. It runs for 30 days with every feature included, and afterward you can keep the permanent free version for teams of up to 3 users.
