I've worked on multiple Kanban software dev teams and a whiteboard never came into play, vs. the scrum or extreme-agile teams which loved them. Kanban seems more about having tickets organized into a priority ordered queue of tasks.
Most teams don’t literally use a physical whiteboard, they use some software that represents the whiteboard.
Do an image search for “Kanban board” and you’ll get a mix of physical whiteboards and software dashboards that imitate the same columnar style.
Though one thing about software development practices is that names have become nearly meaningless as people have adopted different variations. I worked at one company recently that proudly bragged about their “agile methodology” but also demanded everything be planned 6-9 months in advance and made a big deal about tracking metrics for sprint accuracy and failure to complete tickets on time (including too early!).
If you planned for a ticket to go into the next sprint but you finished your work early and did it early, the program managers would start wringing their hands and beating around the bush asking if you could find a way to slip it to the next sprint. Having it go to “done” in a sprint that differed from the plan reduced your “planning accuracy” metric.
The first two (and I would say key) practices of Kanban (as a method) are: - visualize work(flow) - limit work in progress
So I wonder, how did these Kanban teams visualize work exactly?
Now, I don't say the whiteboard (virtual or physical) is the only way to do it, yet it's almost ubiquitous.
that way you can see what state an entire flow is in at a glance and being able to co-ordinate effort accordingly.