[calpaterson]

When I researched this I found that automotive Kanban bore absolutely no relationship to the computing industry's Kanban.

Shigeo Shingo's book (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0915299178/) is particularly emphatic that Kanban was a was for repeatable industrial processes and not, for example, for knowledge work.

Automotive Kanban is not a "Todo"/"doing"/"done" board, by his account anyway. The tickets sat on individual work items and moved around the factory. It was about limiting the number of unfinished work items (which take up space and can be a sign that something is out of control).

[js8]

IMHO Kanban in the computing industry is an analogue of typical task scheduling algorithm on the CPU. Instead of planning the work ahead, you have a work queue and you work each item from it until either the work itself becomes blocked, or (if you're timeboxing/preempting) a fixed period of time expires.

But more generally to the poster's question - like the example above, I think there is a lot in the project management space that was already solved by computer scientists. :-)

[webmaven]

> It was about limiting the number of unfinished work items (which take up space and can be a sign that something is out of control).

As it happens, limiting unfinished work items (aka WIP) boosts software development productivity as well. The space being taken up is mental, but is also a bad sign of things spinning out of control.

[muzani]

Unless you're in a startup, where most ideas are usually distractions, or trying to play catch up with a competitor.

[webmaven]

Well, sure. But if 'succumbing to distractions' is the issue, I'll note that this also tends to result in piles of semi-complete WIP.