Kanban is a way of organizing and visualizing work. It allows you to visualize the workflow as tasks move from to-do to done while also limiting work-in-progress so tasks keep moving towards completion.
Kanban was developed at Toyota to improve and maintain production. Fittingly, there is even a board game called Kanban Automotive Revolution. There are plenty of books on the topic of using Kanban and it is particularly popular in software development and IT work such as with Agile Project Management with Kanban.
There are various software packages and web services that offer digital Kanban boards. The recently launched Visual Studio 2015 includes a Kanban signboard for project management across your team. I like the free service offered by Trello.
A Kanban board can be as simple as three statuses: To Do, Doing, and Done. Each task is summarized in a card that resides in one of the columns and summarizes what needs to be done, who the owner of the task is, a priority, and any other details.
(Credit: Leankit.com)
You are not limited to just three columns though, it can adapt to how you work or requirements of the work.
(Credit: Personal Kanban)
Kanban solves a number of challenges.
Kanban has easy-to-understand principles that makes it more likely to succeed.
Kanban is made of simple ingredients.
(Credit: Toolsforagile.com)
What you need to know.
(Credit: ThinkPurpose.com)
An example of Kanban using Pizza:
(Credit: Graphic Products)