science

Kanban board

Kanban board is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Kanban board rather than just read about it. In short: A kanban board is a visual management tool to represent and track work as it progresses through stages of a process. It is commonly used to implement kanban work management practices at a personal, team, or organizational level.

Key takeaways

Kanban board belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Kanban board to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Kanban board from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

A kanban board is a visual management tool to represent and track work as it progresses through stages of a process. It is commonly used to implement kanban work management practices at a personal, team, or organizational level. Kanban boards visually depict work at various stages of a process using cards to represent work items and columns to represent each stage of the process. Cards are moved from left to right to show progress and to help coordinate teams performing the work. A kanban board may be divided into horizontal "swimlanes" representing different kinds of work or different teams performing the work. Kanban boards can be used for knowledge work or manufacturing processes. Simple boards have columns for "waiting", "in progress", and "completed" or "to-do", "doing", and "done". Complex kanban boards can be created that subdivide "in progress" work into multiple columns to visualise the flow of work across a whole value stream map. According to the Project Management Institute, a kanban board is a "visualization tool that shows work in progress to help identify bottlenecks and overcommitments, thereby allowing the team to optimize the workflow."

Applications

Kanban can be used to organize many areas of an organization and can be designed accordingly. The simplest kanban board consists of three columns: "to-do", "doing" and "done", though some additional detail such as WiP limits is needed to fully support the Kanban Method. Business functions that use kanban boards include:

Kanban board for the software development team. A popular example of a kanban board for agile or lean software development consists of: Backlog, Ready, Coding, Testing, Approval and Done columns. It is also a common practice to name columns in a different way, for example: Next, In Development, Done, Customer Acceptance, Live. Kanban for marketing teams Kanban for HR teams Personal task management or "personal kanban" Kanban for accounting teams. Usually consists of columns: new items, ready for distribution, in progress, and completed.

Notable tools A growing number of personal and project management applications incorporate kanban boards into their software, including:

Airtable, enables users to store, organize, collaborate on, and automate structured data. Asana, with boards. Azure DevOps Server, an integrated ALM-platform for managing work in and across multiple teams. CA Technologies Rally, provides teams with the option of managing pull-based, lean software development projects. ClickUp, a cloud-based personal and project management application. Evernote. Github Projects Jira, provides kanban boards. Kanboard, open source kanban-based project management software. Microsoft Planner, a planning application available on the Microsoft Office 365 platform. Monday.com, a cloud-based platform that allows users to create their own applications and work management software. Notion, a project management and database application includes kanban board views. Odoo, an open-source ERP and CRM, provides kanban boards for most apps. OpenProject, a web-based open source project management system with the ability to create action boards to implement Kanban boards. Pivotal Tracker provides kanban boards. ServiceNow platform, offers kanban style visual task boards. Trello, cards-based project management. Tuleap, agile open source tool for development teams: customize board columns, set WIP (Work In Progress), connect the board with Issue Trackers, Git, Documents. Twproject (formerly Teamwork), project and groupware management tool. Unicom Focal Point, a portfolio management and product management tool. Wrike, An agile collaborative work management. Workflowy, A web-based outliner. Redmine (with plugins) and its spinoff projects Easy Redmine and OpenProject

See also Kanban (development) Scrum Continuous-flow manufacturing Getting Things Done Project management Task management Visual control

Citations

References Project Management Institute (2021). A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK guide). Project Management Institute (7th ed.). Newtown Square, PA. ISBN 978-1-62825-664-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Kanban board

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Kanban board claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Kanban board before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Kanban board ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Kanban board

In research: Kanban board appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Kanban board in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Kanban board is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Japanese business terms, Lean manufacturing, Project management, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Kanban board outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Kanban board in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Kanban board means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Kanban board out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Kanban board in simple terms?

Why does Kanban board matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Kanban board?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Kanban board.