What is Kanban?
Turkish: Kanban
Kanban is a methodology for tracking work through visual board columns (To Do, In Progress, Done) and optimizing flow with WIP limits.
What is Kanban?
Kanban is a work management method that makes work visible and improves flow by limiting how many items are in progress at the same time. In its simplest form, work is tracked on a board with columns such as To Do, In Progress, and Done; the board must reflect the real process.
Work items are represented as cards. Cards move across process columns, WIP limits prevent too much work from accumulating in one stage, and bottlenecks become visible enough for the team to act. Metrics such as lead time, cycle time, and throughput help show how long work actually takes to finish.
Where It Is Used
- Support, maintenance, and operations teams with continuous incoming work
- Product teams that need to track backlog-to-release flow
- Design, content, QA, and DevOps tasks on the same workflow board
- Teams that want capacity limits without committing to sprint cadence
Kanban is a flow discipline, not just a set of meetings. Without clear policies, prioritization rules, and a definition of done, the board becomes only a task list. It often sits alongside Agile, time-boxed planning methods such as Scrum, and backlog management.