What Makes Kanban Popular in 2019? Basic Facts You’ve Wanted To Know

If you’ve ever heard something about project management, then you’ve probably once heard about Kanban. This method seems to be experiencing its second heyday.

If you have no time to read this post at all, just remember the main idea: people choose Kanban for its simplicity and easiness and for the ability to organize and manage tasks and track project workflows. In case you are ready to read on, please dive into the world of Kanban below.

Kanban definition

Kanban literally means a visual card (in Japanese). This term was created to indicate a workflow that limits WIP — work in progress. The Kanban approach has been used in Lean Production for over half-century.

In general, the Kanban concept includes the following:

• Visualizing workflow allows splitting the work into the segments or states, fixing each item on a card and put in an appropriate column to indicate where it is in the entire workflow.
• Limiting WIP lets you assign the limits to how many items can be in progress at each workflow segment or state.
• Measuring the Lead Time (the average time to complete an item) allows tracking the Lead Time and optimize the process to make the Lead Time small and predictable.