Kanban revolves around 6 essential practices that together create a system optimized for flow and continuous improvement. Visualizing workflow through Kanban boards makes invisible knowledge work tangible. Teams map their process as columns (e.g., To Do, In Progress, Review, Done) and represent work items as cards moving across the board, creating transparency around status, bottlenecks, and dependencies. Limiting work in progress (WIP) prevents overloading team members and systems. By establishing maximum counts of items allowed in each stage, teams reduce multitasking, decrease lead times, and improve quality through focus.

When a column reaches its WIP limit, team members must help clear the bottleneck before starting new work. Managing flow shifts focus from individual utilization to system-wide efficiency. Teams monitor metrics like lead time (total time from request to delivery) and cycle time (time spent in active development) to identify improvement opportunities. Additional practices include making process policies explicit, implementing feedback loops at multiple levels, and improving collaboratively through models and the scientific method.