Kanban vs Scrum

Those that are familiar with Agile, particularly in software development, know that Agile is a set of principles that serve as a guide for uncovering better ways of developing software. It is easy to point out the differences between scrum and kanban practices. While both are different in many ways, the principles are the same in that they will help you build better products (and services).

Agile is structured in an iterative approach to both project management and product development. It recognizes the volatility of product development and provides guidelines for self-organizing teams to respond to change. So what are the differences between Kanban and Scrum?

Kanban is all about visualizing the work, limiting work in progress (WIP), and maximizing efficiency. Teams that use kanban focus on reducing the time it takes to take a project from start to finish. They accomplish this by using a kanban board and continuously improve their flow of work. Kanban boards are typically broken into different stages, To Do, In Progress, Blocked, and Done. One of the advantages of using kanban is that you can adjust and add columns that work for your team. Viewing the kanban board can also help determine where bottlenecks are in the project. Unlike scrum, the entire team owns the kanban board and it’s the responsibility of the entire team to collaborate and deliver the tasks on the board.

With scrum, the teams commit to shipping a working product through set intervals called sprints. The goal is to create learning cycles to quickly gather and integrate user feedback. Scrum teams adopt specific roles, create special artifacts, and hold regular ceremonies to keep things moving forward.

Of the two, scrum is widely considered as the structured agile approach. With scrum, the team promises to ship some valuable increment of work by the end of each sprint. Focused on small increments of work that will help the team learn from feedback on what should be done next. Scrum also has three clearly defined roles. You can read my previous post, The Roles of an Agile Scrum Project, that explains these roles in detail.

So which practice should you use for your team? The answer I’ve given when asked this question is to simply chose the one that works for your team. If you really can’t decide, try them both and ask the team which practice they prefer.