Kanban is a lean method for managing and improving flow of work. Work items are visualised on a board with columns representing stages. Work-in-progress limits prevent bottlenecks. Work is pulled when capacity exists — never pushed.
Teams with continuous, unpredictable work — support, maintenance, fast-moving feature teams — or teams wanting lower ceremony overhead than Scrum.
- Design your board columns to reflect your actual workflow stages
- Set WIP limits per column — maximum items allowed at each stage
- Visualise all work — nothing happens off the board
- Pull new work only when capacity exists (WIP limit not reached)
- Track cycle time: how long does a typical item take from start to done?
- Improve the system by identifying and eliminating bottlenecks
The Growth team at Spotify used Kanban for A/B experiment management — experiments don't fit neatly into sprints because they run until statistical significance. Kanban columns: Hypothesis → Design → Development → Live → Analysis → Decision. WIP limit of 3 live experiments at once prevents diluted focus and interaction effects between concurrent tests.
Please contact the author for more information on these examples at linkedin.com/in/kshitijrege
- Using Kanban without WIP limits — without them it becomes a chaotic to-do list
- Not tracking cycle time — you need data to identify bottlenecks
- Confusing activity (cards moving) with outcome (value delivered to users)
- Kanban — David Anderson
- This Is Lean — Modig & Ahlstrom