Kanban is a methodology originally developed by Toyota to be more efficient.
There is only two constraints imposed by Kanban:
- Visualize your workflow
- Limit your work in progress
- Your work is displayed on a board, you have a clear overview of your project
- Each column represent a step in your workflow
- Each phase can have a work in progress limit
- Limits are great to identify bottlenecks
- Limits avoid working on too many tasks in the same time
Kanban uses lead and cycle times to measure performance:
- Lead time: Time between the task is created and completed
- Cycle time: Time between the task is started and completed
By example, you may have a lead time of 100 days and only have to work 1 hour to complete the task.