A Kanban card is a full-fledged element of Kanban management system.

Kanban itself is a Japanese interpretation for a word "card" or "visual signal".

Toyota company pioneered the use of physical Kanban cards to signal steps in the manufacturing process in the late 1940s. These cards with their visual nature allowed teams to communicate easily.

When the Kanban approach emerged as a system in knowledge work, convenient Kanban cards came to represent individual work items.

This card is typically displayed in the form of a sticky note on a whiteboard or as a visual card on an online board. Each card on a Kanban board contains critical information for that piece of work, and its placement on the board visually communicates the work item’s status within the team’s process.

The main idea of a Kanban card is to visually convey a work item’s progress as it flows through a process or particular system. Kanban cards are helpful in the following:

As the main purpose of any Kanban card is to provide a quick visual status of work items, it should contain some details. Here they are:

All these items can provide initial insights into the team’s work.

When Kanban cards move through the workflow, team members use the back of the card to add some applicable metrics:

They provide:

Standardizing tasks with the help of convenient Kanban card templates improves working process efficiency and save the time of the entire team.

Both physical or digital, Kanban cards give enhanced visibility into the status of work and help to communicate with team members effectively.

Dive deeply into more Kanban methodology terms: