Kanban

What it means

Kanban manages work on a board where every task is visible and moves through columns by status. The key is the work-in-progress limit: nothing new starts until something finishes.

It is not about software. The board can hang on a wall or live in a tool; what matters is that a fifth task cannot start while four hang unfinished and nobody knows which one is urgent.

It differs from Scrum in not working in fixed sprints. Work flows continuously, priorities can change at any time, and the main measure is how long a task takes from start to finish. That makes it a better fit for recurring operational work than for one-off projects.

How it works in practice

An accounting office runs its monthly cycle this way: documents, closes, VAT, payroll and filings by client and deadline. A manager sees on one screen where things are stuck, before the due date.

A well-set board exposes the bottleneck faster than any report: if work piles up before one step, capacity belongs there rather than at the start of the process.

Each client card on the board carries a deadline and an owner. If documents from the client are missing, the card moves to a waiting column and the client gets a reminder; it is then clear whose side the delay is on and for which clients the filing deadline is at risk.

What to watch out for

A board nobody updates is worse than none: it creates a sense of control that does not exist. Updating has to be part of the work, not a separate chore at the end of the day.

The second mistake is a work-in-progress limit dropped at the first sign of pressure. When everyone starts everything at once before the VAT deadline, dozens of items are open, none is done, and the risk of missing the deadline grows exactly when it costs most.