Author
Nathan Colt
Senior Project Manager at Kanbanee
Nathan Colt is the Senior Project Manager at Kanbanee. Over twelve years in software delivery he has run everything from 40-person, multi-team release programs at enterprise SaaS vendors to two-pizza product squads - first on Gantt-heavy waterfall tooling, then scrum and SAFe, and since 2019 on plain kanban, which is where he stayed. Today he manages Kanbanee's own product board in the same app you are reading about, and every release of Kanbanee ships through the flow he writes about here.
The methods on this blog are not boutique theory. Kanban started on Toyota's factory floor, and the same pull-based playbook now runs software delivery inside Fortune 1000 giants: Microsoft builds Azure DevOps around kanban boards, Amazon, IBM, Intel and Cisco run agile and kanban across their engineering organizations, and Capital One's agile transformation is one of the most studied in the industry. Nathan's specialty is translating what works at that scale down to teams of two to twenty, where there is no transformation office - just a board, WIP limits and a weekly look at the flow metrics.
His writing rules are simple: no filler, no invented statistics, and no advice he has not run with a real team for at least a few weeks. If a guide shows a screenshot, it is a real screenshot of the live app. If it recommends a limit or a habit, it is one that survived his own sprints.
He covers kanban fundamentals (WIP limits, columns, swimlanes, flow metrics), planning and forecasting with cycle time, time tracking and pomodoro practice, and honest comparisons with scrum, scrumban and other tools when readers ask for them.
Articles by Nathan Colt
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Kanban vs Agile: Is Kanban Actually Agile?
Kanban vs agile compares a method with a philosophy. Whether kanban is agile, what agile kanban means, and where the two disagree.
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Kanban Backlog: How It Works and Stays Short
Does kanban have a backlog? Yes. How it differs from a scrum product backlog, why the ready queue is capped, and what to prune.
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Kanban Board Columns: Naming, Count and Queues
How to design kanban board columns: how many to use, naming them after real stages, and the queue column that reveals bottlenecks.
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Kanban Retrospectives, Ceremonies and Cadences
Kanban requires no ceremonies but has seven cadences. Which meetings small teams need, and how a kanban retrospective differs.
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Kanban Methodology: Why It Is Not a Framework
The kanban methodology: four principles, six practices, why kanban is a method rather than a framework, and how to start today.
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Kanban Metrics: Cycle Time, Throughput and Flow
The four kanban metrics worth tracking, how to read a cumulative flow diagram, and whether kanban has velocity or burndown charts.
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Kanban Planning: Estimation and Forecasting
Planning without sprints: replenishment meetings, forecasting from cycle time, and when kanban estimation still earns its place.
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Kanban Principles and Classes of Service
The four change principles, three service delivery principles, six practices, and how classes of service work on a real board.
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Kanban vs Scrum: Differences and How to Choose
Kanban vs scrum compared on cadence, roles, planning and metrics, plus which to use, whether kanban has sprints, and how to switch.
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Kanban vs Sprint: Does Kanban Have Sprints?
Kanban has no sprints. What that means day to day, what replaces sprint planning, and when a fixed time box is still worth keeping.
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Scrum vs Kanban vs Scrumban: What Scrumban Is
Scrumban explained: what it keeps from scrum and kanban, the three versions teams run, and when it is just scrum with extra steps.
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WIP Limits in Kanban: How to Set Them
What a WIP limit is, why unlimited in-progress work slows teams down, how to pick your first limits, and how to set them in Kanbanee.