Following the tweets of project managers* one cannot help but read about Kanban. The information is usually connected to software development or manufacturing procedures. Kanban uses cards to signal the need for an item. This could be a software feature or missing parts when assembling a device. In the simplest example of device assembly according to the Kanban system, a bin with parts is delivered to the assembly point. Onto the bin a removable Kanban card is placed with the product details and other relevant information. When the bin becomes empty,  meaning all its content has been used for the assembly of devices, the empty bin with its Kanban card will be send back to the supplier. The supplier checks the Kanban card received and sends a new bin with a new Kanban card to the assembly point. So only received Kanban cards, invoke actions for the supplier, and only these parts get delivered for which there is demand. A famous car manufacturer applying the Kanban concept is Toyota.

But how does Kanban help in software development? In a similar way. Just check out Pawel Brodzinski’s blog  and The Kanban Story for more information. It’s a very informative and entertaining set of blog posts.

Update, July 2018: The project management software Merlin Project supports now – in version 5.x – the Kanban concept in addition to the traditional project management and let’s you easily combine the two different approaches. Download and test the macOS app now…

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*) Project Managers on Twitter are marked by  #pmot. The Feed of such a query can be found here