Kanban
A visual workflow management method that limits work in progress, makes bottlenecks visible, and optimises for continuous flow rather than time-boxed sprints.
What is Kanban?
Kanban (Japanese for "signboard") is a workflow management method that visualises work in progress and limits how much work can be in any stage at once. Unlike Scrum, there are no sprints — work flows continuously through columns.
Core Kanban principles
- Visualise the workflow — every task on a board, one card per item
- Limit work in progress (WIP) — max items per column prevents overload
- Manage flow — optimise for fast, smooth delivery, not individual utilisation
- Make policies explicit — "done" means the same thing to everyone
- Improve collaboratively — use data to improve the system, not blame individuals
Kanban vs. Scrum
| Kanban | Scrum |
|---|---|
| No fixed iterations | 1–2 week sprints |
| Continuous delivery | Deliver at sprint end |
| No prescribed roles | Product Owner, Scrum Master, Dev Team |
| Change anytime | Change at sprint boundary |
| Best for continuous flow work | Best for planned feature development |
When to use Kanban
- Support and bug fix queues
- Ops and DevOps pipelines
- Content production workflows
- Small teams with highly variable incoming work
Free templates for Kanban
Frequently asked questions
What's a good WIP limit?
A common rule: number of team members minus one. If you have 4 devs, limit WIP to 3. This forces collaboration and prevents the team from each starting independent work that never gets finished.
Can you combine Kanban and Scrum?
Yes — this is called Scrumban. Teams keep sprint planning and retrospectives from Scrum but replace sprint backlogs with a Kanban board and WIP limits. Common in teams transitioning from Scrum to more continuous delivery.
Apply Kanban to your real product data
PMRead ingests customer feedback, interviews, and Slack threads — and generates PRDs grounded in real evidence.
Related terms
Agile
An iterative approach to software development that delivers working software in short cycles, embraces changing requirements, and prioritises collaboration over documentation.
Scrum
An Agile framework that organises work into fixed-length sprints (1–4 weeks) with defined roles, ceremonies, and artifacts to deliver working software iteratively.
Product Backlog
A prioritised list of all work — features, bugs, improvements, and technical debt — that a product team intends to build, ordered by value and urgency.