The process of kanban, associated with the Toyota production system, incorporates the Japanese philosophy of Muda. Muda is the avoidance or elimination of waste and removing useless activities that do not provide value to the customer. The kanban process was developed by Taiichi Ohno to provide the Toyota production system with a practical approach to specific production and market conditions and to maintain a smooth production flow to promote continuous improvement. Kanban is a Japanese expression meaning signboard and was designed as a flow control system in manufacturing in which downstream process demand signals trigger upstream process activities. Although developed for the manufacturing sector to reduce waste in product production, the Kanban philosophy has been applied to software development activities.
...
Kanban includes a visual workflow on a board divided into columns. Teams use a Kanban board to visualize work progress to facilitate product improvements, monitoring of processes, and effective workflow management. The Kanban board aims to improve the workflow by supporting the principles of limiting work in progress, creating value throughout the process, increasing throughput, and embedding quality within the process. Additionally, kanban boards provide a process to manage the workflow, balance throughput, and make processes explicit as work moves through the different states. Each state in the Kanban process has a clearly defined entry and exit point, providing the team and management with a visual representation of progress.
...