When to Use Kanban: What Project Types Are Best?

Choosing the right methodology can often be the difference between a project that succeeds and one that falls flat, goes over budget, or goes past its projected timeline. Whether you're considering Kanban for the first time or looking to deepen your understanding, we’ll discuss the ideal environments where Kanban truly shines above some of its more popular cousins (like Scrum). We'll dive into its practical applications and benefits so you're equipped to make an informed decision about when — and when not — to use Kanban.

Kanban Basics

Before we get into specific use cases, let’s briefly revisit the structure of Kanban. At its core, this is a graphic workflow management system designed to help teams visualize their work, limit WIP, and maximize efficiency. It revolves around a Kanban board, or a chart that displays the flow of tasks through columns like "To Do," "In Progress," and "Done."

This system is intentionally simple but remarkably powerful in the right situations, allowing for lots of customization depending on a team’s needs and project demands.

Reminder of Kanban vs. Scrum: What Differentiates Kanban?

While both Kanban and Scrum are popular agile methodologies, they differ significantly in their approach and application. Scrum is structured, fixed-length, and iterative, with defined roles, ceremonies, and sprints that guide the development process. Kanban is much more flexible and continuous, focusing on managing flow and optimizing the current process without strict boundaries.

Kanban’s advantages over Scrum include:

Flexibility: Allows for real-time adaptation and prioritization, making it ideal for environments with frequent and unpredictable changes.

Continuous Delivery: With no need to wait for the end of a sprint, teams can deploy updates and improvements as soon as they’re ready.

Simplicity: The lack of predetermined roles and ceremonies makes it easier to implement, especially for teams that find Scrum’s structure too rigid or complicated.

When to Use Kanban: Ideal Kanban Environments

With that understanding, let’s explore the specific scenarios where Kanban is not just useful — but would be the preferred option:

Small Cross-Functional Teams

In smaller teams where members wear multiple hats and handle a variety of tasks, Kanban’s flexibility becomes a significant asset. These teams often face fluctuating workloads that don’t align well with the rigid sprint cycles of Scrum. For example, a small startup development team may need to switch between front-end design, back-end coding, and even customer support. Kanban allows this team to visualize and prioritize tasks on the fly, making sure that nothing falls through the cracks and gets forgotten.

Why Kanban excels here:

Promotes shared ownership of work

Facilitates quick pivots when priorities shift

Encourages T-shaped skill development

DevOps Teams

DevOps teams thrive on the continuous flow of work and the need for real-time responsiveness, both of which are perfectly suited to Kanban. Unlike Scrum, which might impose artificial deadlines that disrupt operational continuity, Kanban enables DevOps teams to focus on flow efficiency so tasks move smoothly from development to deployment. In a CI/CD pipeline, the constant demand for monitoring, testing, and releasing updates benefits from Kanban’s ability to maintain a steady rhythm without the interruptions of sprint boundaries.

Kanban's strengths in DevOps:

Visualizes the entire pipeline from development to deployment

Helps identify and eliminate bottlenecks in the CI/CD process

Facilitates faster feedback loops

Maintenance, Support, or Ongoing Projects

Projects that don't have a clear end date, such as maintenance or support work, find a natural home in Kanban. These environments often involve a steady stream of incoming requests with varying priorities. Kanban’s continuous delivery model allows these teams to address issues as they surface. A team responsible for maintaining a legacy system might need to quickly respond to incidents while also managing long-term improvements. Kanban’s emphasis on visualizing workflow and limiting WIP ensures that urgent tasks are handled promptly, while still making progress on ongoing projects.

Kanban's advantages here:

Easily accommodates changing priorities

Provides clear visibility into the backlog and current work

Allows for continuous delivery of value

Large Number of Small Tasks

When faced with a multitude of small, diverse tasks, Kanban’s visual nature is fantastic for tracking numerous items without losing sight of the big picture. This is particularly true in situations where the volume of tasks fluctuates, and priorities can shift rapidly. For example, a QA team might receive a constant stream of bug reports from multiple development teams. Kanban allows them to visualize and manage these tasks efficiently so that no reports get lost in the shuffle and resources are allocated effectively to address the most critical issues.

Why choose Kanban here:

Efficiently manages a high volume of tasks

Prevents small items from being overlooked

Allows for easy reprioritization

Constrained Resources

In scenarios where resources are limited (time, budget, or personnel) Kanban’s focus on optimizing flow and reducing bottlenecks is key to its success. Teams working under tight constraints can benefit from the framework’s flexibility to prioritize work dynamically and adjust quickly to changes. For instance, a small team tasked with maintaining a large, complex application may need to juggle competing priorities with minimal resources.

Kanban enables this team to limit WIP so they don’t overextend themselves and can deliver high-quality work consistently, even with limited resources.

Kanban's resource management benefits:

Highlights resource bottlenecks

Encourages completion of in-progress work

Improves overall efficiency

When Not to Use Kanban

Despite its versatility, Kanban isn't a one-size-fits-all solution and there are scenarios where it may not be the best fit (typically with Scrum being the preferred alternative):

Projects with Defined Deadlines and Milestones: Scrum’s sprint-based structure is ideal for projects with tight deadlines and clear deliverables. The time-boxed nature of sprints ensures that teams stay on track and can deliver on time, while Kanban may not provide the same level of urgency or focus on milestone delivery.

Teams New to Agile Methodologies: A structured approach with defined roles, ceremonies, and timeframes (like Scrum) can provide a helpful framework for teams new to Agile. The predictability and routine may help these teams develop a disciplined approach to work.

Highly Regulated Industries: In sectors where strict compliance and documentation are required (healthcare, finance), a more structured approach can again be more practical. Formalized review and documentation processes help verify that all regulatory requirements are met.

Projects Requiring Intensive Collaboration and Iteration: For teams working on complex projects, Scrum’s regular sprint reviews and retrospectives foster a culture of continuous collaboration. The scheduled touchpoints can help teams stay aligned and make iterative progress over the course of a project’s lifecycle.

Improve Kanban Efficiency with Spira

Kanban is a useful framework for teams that need flexibility, continuous delivery, and the ability to respond quickly to changing priorities. However, to truly maximize the potential of Kanban (or any development methodology) it’s imperative to have the right tools in place.