Agile

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Kanban is another framework used to implement agile. Back in the 1940s, Toyota optimized its engineering process by modeling it after how supermarkets stock shelves. Supermarkets stock just enough product to meet consumer demand, a practice that optimizes the flow between the supermarket and the consumer. Because inventory levels match with consumption patterns, the supermarket gains significant efficiency in inventory management and optimizing for the customer. When Toyota brought that idea to it's factory floors, teams (such as the team that attaches the doors to the car's frame) would deliver a card, or "kanban", to each other (say, to the team that assembles the doors) to signal that they have excess capacity and are ready to pull more materials. Although the signaling technology has evolved, this system is still at the core of "just in time" manufacturing today.

Agile management or agile process management is an iterative and incremental method of managing the design and build activities for engineering, information technology, and new product or service development in a highly flexible and interactive manner, for example agile software development.