Kanban is a visual workflow management method originating from Toyota's production system that emphasizes continuous flow, work-in-progress limits, and incremental improvement. Unlike sprint-based frameworks, Kanban operates as a pull system where work moves through defined stages only when capacity allows, making it ideal for teams handling continuous delivery, support work, or mixed workloads of features, bugs, and technical debt. The key mental model is flow optimization—Kanban treats your process as a system where constraints (bottlenecks) determine throughput, and visualizing work reveals where improvements yield the highest impact on delivery predictability.