Kanban Architecture is architecture pulled by need, not pushed by function. It makes governed architectural knowledge available at the point of work, in the form people need to address the problem in front of them.
Kanban: A pull-based method originating in the Toyota Production System (TPS) for managing work by making demand, flow, work-in-progress and completion visible so that work is undertaken when needed rather than pushed in advance.
It assumes a stable foundation such as the Business Capability Model (BCM) and Common Data Model (CDM), which can be extended and combined with other organisational knowledge as circumstances require. AI can help translate these shared models into useful working views without requiring every question to become a new architecture project.
People at Gemba use and test those views against operational reality, while architects steward the integrity, coherence and governance of the underlying models. Architecture consequently becomes part of a learning system: knowledge is pulled into work, tested through use, refined through experience and returned to the organisational Knowledge Base.
This is the shift from architecture as artefact to architecture as workwear.
Related glossary items
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- Source Note — Kanban Architecture
- Subject Area — Human–AI Kanban Architecture
- Subject Area – Enterprise Architecture & Operating Model
- Subject Area: Guided Human–AI Collaboration