Applying Scrum With Kanban: Is It Pointless?

Are you struggling to find a project management approach that suits your team's needs and improves productivity? You might have heard of Scrum and Kanban, both popular frameworks used in the software development industry. But have you ever wondered if combining them would be beneficial or pointless? In this article, we will dive into the world of Scrum and Kanban, exploring their individual strengths and weaknesses, and ultimately delving into the question of whether applying Scrum with Kanban is indeed pointless.

The Basics of Scrum and Kanban

Before we evaluate whether combining Scrum with Kanban is pointless, let's understand the fundamentals of each framework.

Scrum

Scrum is an agile project management framework that focuses on creating iterative deliverables within short intervals, known as sprints. It emphasizes collaboration, self-organization, and transparency. Scrum uses a defined set of roles, artifacts, and events to provide structure to the development process.

Applying Scrum with Kanban: A Pointless Book!

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Teams using Scrum divide their work into a backlog of user stories and prioritize them based on the project's goals. During each sprint, the team selects a set of user stories to work on and commits to delivering them by the end of the sprint. Daily stand-up meetings, sprint reviews, and retrospectives are integral parts of the Scrum process, ensuring continuous improvement throughout the project.

Kanban

Kanban, on the other hand, is a lean project management system that enables teams to visualize their work and limit the amount of work in progress (WIP). Kanban focuses on workflow optimization and emphasizes the principles of just-in-time delivery and continuous improvement. It promotes flexibility and encourages teams to adapt to changing priorities.

In the Kanban method, work items move across a board with different columns representing various stages of completion. Each column has a WIP limit indicating the maximum number of items allowed at a given time. This ensures that the team maintains a smooth flow of work and minimizes the risk of overburdening team members.

Scrum and Kanban: Individual Strengths and Weaknesses

Before diving into the question of whether combining Scrum with Kanban is pointless, let's explore the strengths and weaknesses of each framework individually.

Scrum's Strengths:

1. Improved collaboration: Scrum promotes cross-functional teamwork, ensuring better communication and collaboration among team members. This leads to increased efficiency and higher-quality work.

2. Transparency: With daily stand-up meetings and regular reviews, Scrum offers transparency to all stakeholders regarding the project's progress and challenges. This helps in managing expectations and identifying potential roadblocks early on.

3. Predictability: The fixed duration sprints of Scrum provide a predictable rhythm for the team, allowing them to plan and estimate more accurately. This helps in managing stakeholder expectations and meeting deadlines.

Scrum's Weaknesses:

1. Rigidity: Scrum can sometimes be rigid, leaving little room for flexibility when faced with unexpected changes or urgent requirements.

2. Lack of visibility into bottlenecks: Scrum does not provide explicit visibility into bottlenecks or areas of process improvement within the workflow. This can hinder the team's ability to identify and address process inefficiencies.

3. Difficulty in handling external dependencies: Scrum's focus on internal teamwork makes it challenging to manage external dependencies and integrate them seamlessly into the development process.

Kanban's Strengths:

1. Flexibility: Kanban allows teams to adapt to changing priorities and facilitates a more fluid workflow. The absence of fixed sprint durations provides the flexibility required to handle unexpected changes.

2. Visual representation of work: The Kanban board provides a clear visual overview of the entire workflow, making it easier to identify bottlenecks, spot inefficiencies, and improve the overall process.

3. Enhanced focus on continuous improvement: The continuous improvement aspect of Kanban helps teams optimize their workflow and enhance productivity over time. Teams can regularly review their processes and make necessary adjustments.

Kanban's Weaknesses:

1. Lack of timeboxing: The absence of fixed sprints in Kanban can make it difficult to predict deadlines and ensure that work is completed within a specific timeframe.

2. Potential for overburdening team members: Without WIP limits, teams may take on more work than they can handle, leading to burnout and lower quality deliverables.

3. Less emphasis on cross-functional collaboration: Kanban's focus on individual tasks and optimizing workflow may sometimes undermine cross-functional collaboration and shared responsibility.

Combining Scrum with Kanban: Is It Pointless?

Now comes the main question - is combining Scrum with Kanban pointless? The answer, as with many things in the world of project management, is - it depends.

When applied thoughtfully, combining Scrum with Kanban can lead to a powerful hybrid approach that leverages the strengths of both frameworks while mitigating their weaknesses. Here are a few scenarios where this combination can prove to be beneficial:

1. Scrum with Kanban for workflow optimization:

If your team is already practicing Scrum but facing challenges in identifying bottlenecks and visualizing the workflow, introducing Kanban can provide a solution. Adding a Kanban board to your Scrum process can help visualize the entire workflow, making it easier to identify inefficiencies and optimize the process.

2. Scrum with Kanban for flexibility:

If your team is working on a project where priorities change frequently, implementing Kanban alongside Scrum can bring the desired flexibility. By eliminating strict sprints and embracing the continuous flow of Kanban, you allow the team to adapt and reprioritize work items as needed.

3. Scrum with Kanban for managing external dependencies:

Scrum's focus on internal teamwork can sometimes make it challenging to integrate external dependencies smoothly. However, by applying Kanban principles to the Scrum framework, you can introduce more visibility and flexibility in handling external dependencies, ensuring a more seamless development process.

However, combining Scrum with Kanban without careful consideration can lead to confusion, inefficiencies, and the loss of benefits offered by each framework individually. It's essential to assess your team's specific needs and evaluate whether a hybrid approach suits your project and organizational context.

In , combining Scrum with Kanban is not pointless. It can provide valuable benefits to teams in certain scenarios, such as optimizing workflow, enhancing flexibility, and managing external dependencies. However, it's crucial to approach this combination thoughtfully, ensuring it aligns with your team's needs and doesn't undermine the core principles of each framework. So, before jumping into a hybrid approach, understand the strengths and weaknesses of Scrum and Kanban, assess your project's requirements, and decide if this combination is the right fit for your team.

Applying Scrum with Kanban: A Pointless Book!

by Lena Wiese (Kindle Edition)

4 out of 5

Language	:	English
File size	:	11684 KB
Text-to-Speech	:	Enabled
Screen Reader	:	Supported
Enhanced typesetting	:	Enabled
X-Ray	:	Enabled
Word Wise	:	Enabled
Print length	:	219 pages
Lending	:	Enabled
X-Ray for textbooks	:	Enabled

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Kanban is the perfect strategy for optimising flow, especially when applied with Scrum.

But how do they work in perfect harmony when for years the have been touted as adversaries?

My name is Andy Hiles and as an experienced Scrum Master, Scrum and Kanban trainer and a recognised contributor to the Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams from Scrum.org, I felt there was a gap or lack of practical explanation between the Kanban Guide for Scrum Teams and the content of the Professional Scrum with Kanban course.

So are you confused about the purpose of Story-Points? Have you been asked 'When will it be done?' and not had any confident answer? or indeed provided a velocity or number of sprints as a deterministic solution? Perhaps you are under confident in applying Kanban or unsure of how it could complement your Scrum Team.

My aim for this book was to present a more complete view of how someone could actually utilise the guidance and learnings in a practical way, for teams, in real life. Hence, this book was my way of trying to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together to fit some sort of practical, relatable experience.

The story follows Katie as an experienced Scrum Master struggling to satisfy the demands of the stakeholders and the management team in her organisation. After a particularly difficult day at work Katie realises that the answer she has been looking for has been hiding in plain sight all along.

With the help of the rest of the Scrum Team and a bit of guidance from an experienced coach, Katie soon learns the power of combining both Scrum and Kanban to maximise value and leverage flow.

★★★★★

Teams and organizations around the world are looking to Agile as a way of providing a simple way of dealing with complex changes while still retaining a level of business agility – the ability to stay relevant in the market place, to fight off the market place disruptors.

Agile has slowly been dominating the approach that many organizations are taking. Frameworks such as Scrum and strategies like Kanban have fought for popularity as teams try to use these tools as a way of managing the complexity and risk associated with building, maintaining and changing products.

In the public domain, Agile communities have tended to side with each technique individually and has ended with lots of media information titled ‘Scrum vs Kanban’, as if it is a choice for one or the other.

This book builds upon the release of the Kanban guide for Scrum teams from Scrum.org that highlights utilizing both techniques together can help teams optimize the flow of value they deliver. Or in other words provide advice and best practices for teams performing complex product change.

Not really such a pointless book afterall!

★★★★★

About the author:

Andy Hiles is a highly experienced Professional Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org and a Professional Kanban Trainer with Pro Kanban.

Andy's career has taken him on a journey from late 90’s web development through professional organisations such as Nokia and IBM to now, where Andy is a professional trainer, coach and consultant. Along the way Andy learned XP, Scrum and Kanban ‘hands-on’, through leading teams of people developing complicated solutions in complex product and service delivery environments.

Andy now works with teams of people at every level to help them work smarter towards achieving their goals. Whether that's through professional personal and group coaching; or coaching Kanban with Professional Scrum, it's always based upon client and customer outcomes in mind.