Definition
Kanban
Kanban is a visual workflow method that maps work onto a board of columns representing stages — typically backlog, in progress, and done. Cards move left to right as work advances. It emphasizes continuous flow, making bottlenecks visible, and limiting work in progress rather than committing to fixed time-boxes.
Key takeaways
- Kanban is a visual workflow method: work is cards, columns are stages, and cards move left to right from backlog to done.
- It emphasizes continuous flow over fixed time-boxes — work is pulled into progress as capacity frees up rather than committed in sprints.
- WIP limits are the core mechanism: capping how many cards a column holds forces teams to finish work before starting more.
- Kanban is measured by flow metrics — cycle time and throughput — not by how much was estimated up front.
Kanban originated on Toyota's factory floor, where physical cards signaled when a station was ready to pull more work. Software teams adopted the same idea: a board where each card is a unit of work and each column is a state. The power is not the board itself but what it reveals — where work piles up, where it stalls, and how much is in flight at any moment.
Unlike a sprint-based cadence, classic Kanban is continuous. There is no fixed iteration that everything must fit into; work is pulled into progress as capacity frees up. Teams pair the board with WIP limits — caps on how many cards a column may hold — so that finishing work is prioritized over starting new work. When a column is full, the team swarms to clear it before pulling more.
Kanban metrics focus on flow: cycle time (how long a card takes from start to done) and throughput (how many cards complete per period). These are leading indicators of predictability that don't require estimating every item up front.
In Planoda, every board is a Kanban surface with drag-and-drop columns, optional WIP limits per column, and live flow metrics, so teams can run continuous flow or layer cycles on top of the same board.
Related terms
- WIP LimitA WIP (work-in-progress) limit is a cap on how many items may be active in a given workflow stage at once. By forcing a team to finish work before starting more, WIP limits expose bottlenecks, reduce context-switching, and shorten cycle time. They are the core mechanism that makes Kanban flow rather than pile up.
- Cycle (Sprint)A cycle — often called a sprint — is a fixed, repeating time-box, usually one or two weeks, during which a team commits to a focused set of work and aims to finish it. Cycles create a regular cadence for planning, focus, and review, turning an open-ended backlog into shippable increments.
- BacklogA backlog is the ordered list of all work a team has identified but not yet started — features, bugs, improvements, and ideas. It is the team's single source of pending work, prioritized so the most valuable or urgent items sit at the top, ready to be pulled into a cycle or onto a board.
- Board (Kanban Board)A board is a visual layout that arranges work as cards in columns, where each column represents a stage of a workflow — typically backlog, in progress, and done. Cards move left to right as work advances. Boards make a team's flow visible at a glance, exposing where work sits, stalls, or piles up.
- VelocityVelocity is the average amount of work a team completes per cycle, measured in issues or story points. By tracking it over several cycles, teams forecast how much they can realistically take on next. Velocity is a planning aid for a specific team over time — never a target to maximize or a way to compare teams against each other.