The kanban principles are the rules about how you change and run a team, and the kanban practices are the six things you do on the board. The current Kanban Guide names three change management principles (start with what you do now, pursue evolutionary change, lead at every level) and three service delivery principles. Most articles blur these into one list of "six principles". They are really principles and practices, and they do different jobs.
This guide separates the two, then puts all of it on one small board so you can see where each rule lives.
What are the principles of kanban?
The principles are about attitude toward change and toward the work itself. They do not appear on the board as columns or limits. They decide how you set the board up and what you do when it disappoints you.
The Kanban Guide from Kanban University lists them in two groups. The change management principles are common to every kanban implementation.
- Start with what you do now.
- Agree to pursue improvement through evolutionary change.
- Encourage acts of leadership at all levels.
Older write-ups, including David Anderson's 2010 book, list four. The extra one told teams to respect current roles and job titles at the start. It still shapes how people introduce kanban, though the guide no longer counts it separately.
The service delivery principles are the second group. They say to understand and focus on customer needs and expectations, to manage the work and let people self-organize around it, and to review the network of services and its policies regularly so outcomes improve.
What is the difference between kanban principles and practices?
Principles say why and how to change. Practices say what to put on the board and what to do each week. If you could point at it on a screen, it is a practice. If it describes how you decide to move, it is a principle.
That is why "start with what you do now" has no column. It is the reason your first board copies your existing steps instead of a framework you read about last night. A principle also explains why a board can be wrong in ways that no setting fixes. If the team does not agree to change in small steps, no WIP limit rescues it.
What are the six kanban practices?
The six general practices are visualize, limit work in progress, manage flow, make policies explicit, implement feedback loops, and improve collaboratively while evolving experimentally. Each one has a concrete form on a board.
| Practice | What it looks like on a board |
|---|---|
| Visualize | Columns for your real steps, one card per piece of work |
| Limit WIP | A number on each active column |
| Manage flow | Watching how long cards sit and where they pile up |
| Make policies explicit | Written rules for when a card may move |
| Feedback loops | A recurring review of the board |
| Improve collaboratively | Changing one rule at a time and checking the result |
Miro's guide to the same list leans on tools and team types. This one stays on the board itself, because that is where the practices either hold or do not.
What does a board that uses all of them look like?
Take a freelance designer with six clients. Their board has five columns.
Inbox | Briefed (3) | Designing (2) | Client review | Done
Visualize is the five columns. They copied what already happened, from a request arriving to a client signing off, which is the first principle at work. Nothing about the workflow was invented.
Limit WIP is the 3 and the 2. With "Designing (2)", the logo for the bakery and the menu for the café can both be active, and the third job waits in Briefed until one of them moves to Client review. The pull behind that rule gets its own page in the kanban pull system explained, and picking the numbers is covered in WIP limits in Kanban.
Manage flow is what the designer does on Friday. The café menu has sat in Client review for nine days. That is a flow problem, not a design problem, so the next action is a nudge email rather than another round of edits. The numbers behind this, such as cycle time, are in kanban metrics explained.
How do you make policies explicit?
Write the rule where the board can show it, in the column header or a pinned card. A policy is any rule that decides whether a card may move. For the designer, three are enough.
- A card enters Briefed only when the client has sent assets and a deadline.
- A card leaves Designing only when the file is exported in the format the client asked for.
- Client review waits at most five days before a reminder goes out.
None of these is clever. Their value is that a stranger, or the designer in a bad month, can read them and act the same way. Teams that skip this practice usually discover their policies by arguing about a card that moved at the wrong time.
How do feedback loops and improvement work together?
A feedback loop is a scheduled look at the board that produces a decision. For a solo board, ten minutes on Friday is enough, and a weekly review on a kanban board walks through one. Team boards usually add a short daily check.
Improvement is what the loop feeds. Change one thing, such as lowering Designing from 2 to 1, and watch for two weeks. This is the second principle in action. Evolutionary change means small enough that you can tell what worked, and that one-at-a-time rule is the part teams drop first.
Where do kanban principles go wrong in practice?
The most common failure is keeping the practices and dropping the principles. The board has columns, limits and a review, but the team treats the limits as a target to get around. Everyone agrees the "Designing (2)" rule is sensible and moves a third card in anyway because a client called.
Tool design matters here. EasyKanban treats WIP limits as advisory, so an overloaded column turns its header warning colour and the card still lands. That avoids a drag failing halfway, and it also means the principle has to carry the weight. A limit works only if someone reads the signal and chooses to pull back.
The second failure is copying a template wholesale and calling it "starting with what you do now". If the template's columns are not your steps, you did not start there. A free board with five columns takes a few minutes to build on a minimal kanban board, so there is little reason to import someone else's process on day one.
Frequently asked questions
What are the 6 principles of kanban?
The popular "six principles" are really the six general practices: visualize work, limit work in progress, manage flow, make policies explicit, implement feedback loops, and improve collaboratively. The official principles are separate. There are three on change management and three on service delivery, listed in the Kanban Guide.
What are the 4 principles of kanban?
Older sources, including David Anderson's 2010 book, list four. They are to start with what you do now, to pursue incremental and evolutionary change, to respect current roles and job titles at first, and to encourage leadership at every level. The current Kanban Guide no longer lists the third.
What are the 3 principles of kanban?
The Kanban Guide gives three change management principles. Start with what you do now. Agree to pursue improvement through evolutionary change. Encourage acts of leadership at all levels. A second set of three, the service delivery principles, covers customer focus, self-organization around the work, and regular review of policies.
What is the difference between kanban principles and values?
Principles guide how you change and deliver. Values, such as transparency and respect, describe the culture that makes those principles workable. Most teams do not need to list values to start. They need a board whose columns match real work, and a rule for what moves next.
Do I need all six practices from day one?
No. Start with visualize and one WIP limit, because those two change behaviour the fastest. Add written policies once the first argument about a card shows you need them, and a weekly review once the board has something to review. The principles actually argue for this slow build.
Related reading
Build the five-column board from this guide and set one number on the middle column. Start a free board on EasyKanban and see which practice your own work asks for next.