What is 'Kanban?' Explainer + free 'Kanban board' template

Table of Contents:
00:00 - Intro
00:43 - History of Kanban
04:27 - How Kanban boards work
06:12 - Manage tasks visually
07:01 - Kanban board view
07:25 - Calendar view
07:45 - Dashboard view

What is Kanban? Kanban is a project management framework that uses a notecard visualization to style cards on a board so team members can easily see where each task or project is in a series of workflow stages.

The Kanban system, invented at Toyota, helped transform the automaker from selling less than three hundred cars a year to one of the largest automakers in the world and making hundreds of billions in revenue as of 2021.

In this video, we’re going to explain Kanban and its origins, how a Kanban Board works, and how you can download and customize a spreadsheet template we created to get started - all under eight minutes. If you want to go straight to the spreadsheet explainer, do so now.

The Kanban system was developed by the industrial engineer Taiichi Ohno at Toyota in the 1950s. The term was popularized in Japan around the 1600s, when the economy took off and Japanese towns were flooded with competing businesses who needed artful signboards to stand out and compete for customers.

This tradition has carried forward to the neon, LED, and 3D billboards that populate Japanese cities today. The best of these signboards communicated their core value in as clear and concise a way as possible.

Ohno’s Kanban system uses signs cards on a sign board to visually show what stage a task is in, and prompt viewers which actions to take next in a process workflow.

In Ohno’s owns words, the system was designed, “to produce only what is needed, when it is needed and in the amount needed.”

To learn more, watch the video in full!

[FreakMC]

I absolutely love spreadsheets, more than a normal person should, so this would be right up my alley... if I had found this video a few months ago.

But recently, I've been trying to switch most of my systems to physical stuff instead of digital and that's when I discovered kanban and started to implement it in my own life. I tried it for a bit digitally but it works sooo much better physically. No barrier to entry, it's physically *there* 24/7 so my brain can't ever forget about it like it can with stuff I write into my computer or phone, and it feels so much better to move stuff around physically than digitally.

But I might take a few cues from this and implement it into my own system! Or maybe even online, I am still working in spreadsheets but its more supplementary now instead of a primary system it was before.

[CumplimientoANAN]

Muchas gracias por la herramienta estaba desorganizado me ayudara mucho para organizar mis actividades de asesoria

[khalidbaacha]

isn't a free template? great work.

[louisecolwell]

Love the spreadsheet! If I join You Exec on benefits tab, will the template have unlimited person responsible and unlimited tasks?

[anthonyjohnson]

Looks like the link is getting a 502 error. Could you re link? Thnaks!!

[kenjomel]

I am currently searching for a tool like this for a small firm like us. I would love to use the free version first to test things out, but only the excel version link works. Google sheet version says not found. Please help. Thank you.

[Childemeister]

what if i want to add more fields like Project ID or Person Responsible ID?

[HikaruLychee]

Hello! Can we still download this file? I can't find a link anywhere :( I absolutely love this and would really help me with a current situation at work. Thanks in advance!

[jamej]

Downloaded, but there's no Caledar/Dashboard/Analysis views?

[squetch]

i do not understand your subscription model, a pack model makes more sense.

[DougPowell]

Say "Kanban" correctly and I'll finish watching your video... Sheesh!