the.com/kanban
a wall of sticky notes that quietly runs half the world's software teams.
means a visual workflow system where tasks move across columns like to-do, doing, done, so work-in-progress stays visible and limited.
from coined at toyota in the 1940s, where kanban means signboard in japanese, factory workers used physical cards to signal when parts were needed, pulling supply instead of pushing it, taiichi ohno adapted it from watching american supermarkets restock shelves only as items sold.
supermarket origininspired by how grocery stores restock, not push inventory
core rulelimit work-in-progress before starting anything new
not scrumno sprints or fixed iterations, just continuous flow
physical firsttoyota used actual cardboard cards, not software
for instance
toyota production system — 1940s japan, the original factory-floor version
trello boards — popularized digital kanban for millions of teams since 2011
personal kanban — jim benson's 2011 book brought it to individual productivity