Reviewed by:

Bernie Maloney, CST

Paul Moore, CST

Kanban works almost anywhere.

If you've ever been cruising at 70 m.p.h. down the freeway and then have to brake suddenly because of a traffic jam, you understand the concept of flow (and how logjams interrupt flow through the system). Kanban is a principle-based framework that helps teams visualize their work, including progress and bottlenecks. Empowered teams can then identify what's hindering flow and develop innovative solutions to make improvements.

Kanban isn't a new way of working—it pre-dates scrum and agile by several decades. Kanban was first created in Japan at Toyota in the 1940s. It was developed by Taiichi Ohno, an industrial engineer at Toyota, as part of the Toyota Production System (TPS) to improve manufacturing efficiency.

We've since discovered that kanban works well for any team trying to improve the flow of work. It improves operations in business functions such as Finance or Marketing, as well as retail stores, restaurants, emergency rooms, and more. Kanban is a flexible system adaptable to almost any type of work. Flow, visibility, and incremental change are universal needs.

Any team, any industry: How kanban adapts

Software, product, and digital teams

For teams in the software and digital creation spaces, kanban improves communication between designers, developers, stakeholders, and team leads. While traditionally these roles may manage their work in siloes, a kanban board makes the entire process flow transparent and visible to everyone involved. 

For example, when a team looks at their board, they may notice that tasks sit in the queue for several days awaiting review. This visible bottleneck is a signal that the flow isn't smooth, and the team now has an opportunity to discuss an adjustment to their process, such as implementing a two-day approval timeframe. This may drastically improve the team's ability to deliver a continuous flow of value.

For software and digital teams that work on a lot of bug fixes, small changes, or minor design updates that don't require extensive planning, kanban is a lightweight way of managing work. The focus is more on flow than new features, so it's a better fit for some teams.

Operations and support teams

Kanban has long been the preferred framework for teams that primarily focus on operational effectiveness and delivery times, or for teams that work in unpredictable ways—help desks, customer service, or DevOps teams. For these teams that experience daily requests, it’s almost impossible to plan a sprint, so focusing on improving flow and reducing bottlenecks with Kanban is critical for success. 

Additionally, operations teams have high volumes of work requests, so managing them asynchronously can hide various bottlenecks that may be causing delays. Kanban makes work visible and surfaces hidden bottlenecks, empowering all team members to creatively find solutions to improve operations.

Marketing, HR, finance, and other business functions

Marketing teams have traditionally worked in siloes, passing work from strategy to content, to design, to digital. When this happens, work can take an extremely long time to go from ideation to completion. With kanban, marketers can work more collaboratively as a team, having a better understanding of the tasks needed to complete the work, and identify if something is causing a bottleneck. Additionally, marketers can visualize campaign workflows and content pipelines, gaining more visibility into what's coming next.

HR teams can benefit from kanban by collaborating on tasks related to hiring, onboarding, policy changes, benefit updates, and more. A kanban board allows everyone in HR to become faster and more efficient in how they operate, focusing on making more effective decisions with minimal delay.

Finance teams and other business functions can also reap the many benefits of kanban, such as increasing throughput of work and reducing delays in internal workstreams.

Physical industries and complex environments

Kanban is rooted in lean manufacturing, and it's still widely used there today. There are decades of case studies showing how car companies and other manufacturers have streamlined operations with kanban methods. Fast-food chains that have to communicate workflows to franchisees and operate with speed and efficiency have benefited from kanban. 

Post offices, DMVs, hospitals, doctors' offices, and any place that services customers can benefit from improving operations with kanban. You've probably been to a DMV that's inefficiently run. Chances are, they've never tried kanban! If they do, they'd probably be able to identify the bottlenecks and innovate on ways to make it more efficient and a better experience for customers.

When kanban makes sense

Kanban is so versatile, so how do you know when it makes sense? The biggest reasons for adopting kanban are:

• When you need flexibility without losing focus, particularly when you're managing ongoing work or you have a large volume of new work coming to your team frequently.
• When visibility into the work taking place is missing and you need better transparency for stakeholders and collaborators.

• When you want to immediately improve your operational efficiency, without waiting for a major process change to begin.

Why kanban is useful for scrum teams too

If you're already using scrum, you don't need to abandon it to implement kanban. The great news is that kanban can complement your scrum team by incorporating flow-based practices, such as visualization boards and work-in-progress (WIP) limits. 

Kanban isn't just for one type of team. It's for any team that wants to work smarter. Enroll in Scrum Better with Kanban. Bonus: You'll earn credentials from both SAI and Kanban University when you complete the course!