what does kanban board mean

What Does Kanban Board Mean?

I am a huge fan of the Kanban methodology. It is ideal for any environment and allows teams to complete work in a very efficient and productive manner. It is a great alternative to the Scrum and Agile methodology. The methodology of Kanban has grown in popularity in recent years. It is a system that incorporates the idea of limiting the workload your team can take on at any given time, while giving them an unlimited amount of space to complete tasks. And in this article I would like to describe to you what does kanban board mean.

The Origin Of Kanban Boards

Kanban historically has been associated with manufacturing processes. It was invented by Taiichi Ohno during the Second World War at the Toyota plant to control their production line. It gets its name from the Japanese Kanban means “signboard”. The term Kanban originally referred to a visual signal of whether there were outstanding work orders available to be processed on a particular production line.

The Kanban board was used for managing tasks, where the work items are represented by sticky notes on the board. Each of the sticky note represents a task for a team member to complete. The idea of Kanban is to visualize all work that needs to be done, not just the work that is being done now. It also holds you accountable, because you’ll have to explain why your sticky notes aren’t moving on the board. 

It is perhaps one of the most significant management techniques since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Lean Manufacturing implements simple but effective rules which enable companies to cut costs, increase productivity, and provide better customer support.

What Is The Kanban Board For?

You can use Kanban boards for managing knowledge work and software development. Also for tasks related to operations, project management, change control, capacity planning and so on. A Kanban board represents the workflow in a visual way, helping to improve the flow of work through your organization. A Kanban board works best when your team focus on one category of work at a time, using one column per category. This board looks great in any office environment, but its simplicity also makes it perfect for use at home.

To see a video demo of all of Kanbanchi's features right here, please, accept functionality cookies.


Benefits Of The Kanban Board

What makes this tool perfect for each goal-oriented activity is the capability to assign all the activities into the three stages of this board. After you are able to assign the tasks, you are to complete them one by one following a prioritized process. 

Kanban also does not presuppose any role: yes, it is the project manager’s responsibility to set up the process and create necessary columns. But anyone can take action on a card from any column. This is another simple rule that helps people get on board with Kanban. In some ways, you can even see this philosophy in Agile methodology where anyone can suggest a change in product development if they find something inappropriate.

Kanban works very well with any team. It is growing to be one of the most frequently used workflow management tools in the software industry. The reason why it’s becoming more popular is that the Kanban tool is very intuitive, easy to use, and easily applicable to different projects.

How Kanban Board Works In Practice

If you are used to paper-based sticky notes, then project management software like Kanbanchi will instantly feel familiar. All you have to do is “stick” your tasks into the kanban lists and get on with your work. Every task which you take off the backlog will move to the started list. If you have finished, take it out of the started list and put it into the done list. Kanbanchi is an ideal product for getting up to speed quickly.

Kanbanchi is very easy to implement because it is an online collaboration tool. It basically lets you manage your tasks online via a customizable Kanban board which will improve your personal productivity without any additional equipment or device installation. Kanbanchi is the best Kanban software for teams that use Google Workspace. Kanbanchi can create many boards with lists inside each board, and tasks inside lists. Each user has its own dashboard where they can be notified about new tasks, open tasks, numbers of completed and remaining tasks and more.

Start using Kanbanchi now

Start your free trial