When something exits the “In Progress” column, another item can take its place. With this minimal sorting of work, everyone knows the status of every item under consideration. The most straightforward boards have three columns: The Kanban Board puts every project, initiative, and feature into one of the columns. While this may eventually lead to substantial shifts in how organizations function, it’s not disruptive and doesn’t force staff to make any uncomfortable changes. It can be superimposed on top of what’s happening now and visualizing things, slowly introducing incremental changes to make development more efficient.

What separates Kanban from some other processes is that it doesn’t require you to blow everything up and start over. It emphasizes demand-driven development, which minimizes waste. It was developed by Toyota to support its just-in-time manufacturing process, leading to the Lean approach. In fact, “Kanban” in Japanese means “billboard” or “signboard.” It’s practically synonymous with its eponymous artifact, the Kanban Board, which has taken on a life beyond Agile product development. Kanban is a highly visual way of executing Agile. Moreover, if one seems preferable to the other, you can use this as your starting point to convince whoever calls the shots in your shop that maybe they should give your favorite a try.

Instead, we’re going to explain what they are and how they differ so you can hold your own when talking shop with coworkers or interviewing for a new product management role. This article won’t tell you which one you should choose-and possibly, it’s not your choice, anyway. But the two most popular approaches to bringing Agile to life and into practice are Kanban and Scrum. Thanks to countless coaches, gurus, and books on the subject, there are many systems to do it. There’s more than one way to incorporate Agile into your product development process.

Scrum board trello example