Kanban
A workflow management method that visualizes work, limits work-in-progress, and optimizes flow. Unlike Scrum's fixed sprints, Kanban uses a continuous flow model where items move through stages as capacity becomes available.
Kanban originates from Toyota's manufacturing system and was adapted for knowledge work. Its core principles are to visualize the workflow, limit work-in-progress at each stage, manage flow, make process policies explicit, and improve collaboratively. By capping how many items can be in any stage simultaneously, Kanban prevents bottlenecks and reduces context switching.
Kanban is often a better fit than Scrum for growth engineering and AI operations teams because their work tends to be interrupt-driven and variable in size. A growth team might handle urgent experiment analysis, routine A/B test launches, and longer-term feature development simultaneously. Kanban's WIP limits ensure the team does not overcommit while its continuous flow model accommodates the unpredictable pace of experiment results. AI teams running model monitoring and incident response also benefit from Kanban's flexibility, pulling work as capacity frees up rather than committing to fixed sprint plans that break when production issues arise.
Related Terms
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The degree to which a product satisfies strong market demand. Achieving product-market fit means customers are actively seeking, using, and recommending your product because it solves a real and pressing problem for them.
Jobs to Be Done
A framework that defines customer needs as functional, emotional, and social jobs people hire products to accomplish. It shifts focus from demographic segments to the underlying progress customers are trying to make in specific circumstances.
Minimum Viable Product
The simplest version of a product that can be released to test a core hypothesis with real users. An MVP delivers just enough functionality to gather validated learning while minimizing development time and cost.
Minimum Lovable Product
An evolution of the MVP concept that emphasizes delivering enough quality and delight that early users genuinely love the product. It balances speed-to-market with the emotional engagement needed to drive organic word-of-mouth growth.
Design Sprint
A five-day structured process for rapidly prototyping and testing ideas with real users. Developed at Google Ventures, it compresses months of debate into a focused week of mapping, sketching, deciding, prototyping, and testing.
Lean Startup
A methodology for developing businesses and products through validated learning, rapid experimentation, and iterative releases. It emphasizes reducing waste by testing assumptions before building fully-featured solutions.