Kanban has its origins in the Toyota production system and aims, among other things, at minimizing stock levels and at ensuring a smooth production flow. Kanban in IT is mainly inspired by Lean Development. A characteristic feature ofKanban is the Kanban board, where requirements are written on index cards (=Ticket), then put on a board where it moves from left to right according to the status of completion: At the left is the first workflow (e.g. requirement spezification), on the right is the final workflow (e.g. deployment/roll-out). An important principle is to limit the work-in-progress ("WIP-limit"); the number of tickets processed per developer is therefore limited.

Just like SCRUM, Kanban is also agile, but there are some differences: In SCRUM the Scrum team commits itself to a certain amount of work during the sprint (iteration cycle); estimates (e.g. story points) have been worked out for this amount of work beforehand; there is the Product Owner, the Scrum Master and the Scrum Team; each sprint has a predefined length (2 to 4 weeks). In Kanban on the other hand, there are no predefined roles, estimates of tasks are not mandatory; iterations are also optional in Kanban, a development team does not commit itself to the processing of a predefined scope of work during an iteration.

Author

Sebastian Zang has cultivated a distinguished career in the IT industry, leading a wide range of software initiatives with a strong emphasis on automation and corporate growth. In his current role as Vice President Partners & Alliances at Beta Systems Software AG, he draws on his extensive expertise to spearhead global technological innovation. A graduate of Universität Passau, Sebastian brings a wealth of international experience, having worked across diverse markets and industries. In addition to his technical acumen, he is widely recognized for his thought leadership in areas such as automation, artificial intelligence, and business strategy.