Scrum vs Kanban: Know Your Agile Frameworks

Scrum or Kanban? This is possibly the most asked question about agile methodologies and its practices. When it comes to choosing an agile framework to improve how your team work together, it can be tough to decide between Scrum and Kanban. Both are popular approaches that are widely used by companies around the world, and they each have their own strengths and limitations.

In this article, we're going to compare these two frameworks and discuss when to use one over the other.

First, What is Scrum?

Scrum is a framework for managing complex work that involve a high degree of uncertainty. It is based on the idea of iterative development, where teams work in short "sprints" to deliver small chunks of a larger work. A sprint has a clear goal and typically lasts one to four weeks. Every sprint, the team works closely together to plan, track, and review their progress against the committed goal.

Scrum prescribes different roles, meetings, and deliverables as the building blocks of the Scrum workflow. One key feature in Scrum is the prioritised Product Backlog, which acts as the central list of work for the team to complete.

Another key feature of Scrum is the use of Daily Scrum meetings, where team members briefly discuss their progress and any roadblocks they’re facing. This helps keep the team focused and ensures everyone gets the support they need to complete their work. Scrum also emphasises the importance of self-organisation and cross-functional collaboration, as well as continuous improvement through the use of feedback and retrospectives.

Now, What About Kanban?

Kanban, on the other hand, is an agile framework that focuses on visualising and optimising the flow of work. It was originally developed by Toyota to improve its manufacturing processes, and it has since been adapted for use in a variety of industries.

Kanban aims to optimise the flow of work through a process, and it does this by using a board (physical or digital) with cards that represent tasks. The kanban board is divided into different columns, with each column representing the different stages of the process a piece of task must go through.

As new tasks are added to the board, team members move the card along the board depending on the stage the card is at, in that point in time. This helps to make the work visible and gives team members a clear understanding of what is done and what needs to be done. Kanban also emphasises the importance of limiting work in progress and managing the flow of work to avoid bottlenecks and delays.

When to Use Which?

So, which approach is right for your team? It really depends on the nature of your work and the needs of your team. Here are three important factors to consider:

• Work complexity: Scrum is generally better suited for large, complex work with many components, while Kanban is more suitable for smaller pieces of work with fewer parts.

  For example, a product team building a new e-commerce platform might benefit more from using Scrum, as it lets them to break the product down into smaller pieces and deliver it incrementally.

  On the other hand, a content marketing team might find it more helpful to use Kanban to visually lay out their work and track the progress of their marketing materials from creation to publishing.

• Level of commitment: Compared to Kanban, Scrum is more prescriptive, with a set definition of roles, events, and deliverables. So it’s more suited for teams that can offer higher level of commitment to implement the framework. While Kanban is more lightweight.

  Kanban is generally more flexible and is designed to integrate with existing team structure and ways of working to start off with. This makes Kanban more suited for teams with limited room to change their ways of working.

• Level of certainty: Scrum is better suited for work that have a high degree of uncertainty, as it allows teams to explore, plan and adapt their efforts as they learn more about the work. While Kanban is better suited for work with more predictable activity, expectation, and outcome, as it helps teams optimise the flow of work and minimise waste.

  For example, a team working on a website redesign might find it more beneficial to use Scrum, as the regular planning and review sesions in Scrum can better enable them to plan their new design, launch the features, and measure user responses more effectively.

  On the other hand, a customer support team might be better suited to use Kanban. Considering customer support teams typically deal with customer queries of similar nature, the team can take advantage of the Kanban board to visually track open issue tickets and gather insights such as the average number of issues raised or closed per month.

Ultimately, the choice between Scrum and Kanban will depend on the specific needs of your team and the nature of your work. Both approaches have their strengths and weaknesses, and the right one for your team will depend on a variety of factors.

In real practice, it’s very common for teams to mix agile methodologies together. As an example, so many Scrum teams actually rely on using Kanban boards to visualise and track their work items. And this is naturally expected in real agile practices.

Remember, agile is about adapting to real conditions. By taking the time to carefully consider your options and choose the approach that best fits your team's needs, you can set your team up for success and achieve the results you want.

Need help to implement Scrum and Kanban? We got you.

Talk to us today to find out how we can help your team reach their goals.

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Cover photo: unsplash/@raddfilms