With digital transformation pushing companies to produce software at a faster rate, recent frameworks have been created to deliver at a quicker rate. Kanban and Scrum frameworks both optimize the work process, allow for large tasks to be broken down and completed efficiently, and have tangible benefits to improving your team’s working style. But which method is best for your company? Understanding the difference between Scrum and Kanban will help you choose the right path for your enterprise.
Scrum is a widely adopted agile framework for software development. Work is done in ‘sprints,’ usually producing an MVP within 2 to 4 weeks. The teams create a prioritized list called a product backlog. During sprint planning, the team selects a small batch of directives from the list - a sprint backlog - and decides how to move forward with the tasks. The team, directed by a “Scrum Master” has a certain amount of time, usually 2 to 4 weeks, to complete the work. Every day there is a daily scrum to assess the progress.
There are many tangible benefits to using scrum outside of quicker production times. The scrum framework forces your team to change their normal habits. There will be more constructive communication from the daily scrum, shared responsibility, an increase in code quality and velocity. Agility is built into the scrum framework.
Kanban is a tool used to organize work efficiently. Kanban also breaks down work into manageable chunks and places them on a board to visualize progress. The Kanban board has columns where there work items are passed through: “in progress, testing, ready for release, and released.” Scrum limits the amount of time to accomplish the “sprint” whereas Kanban limits the amount of work allowed in each column. Only so many tasks can be in “testing,” or “in progress.” If there are too many work items in one column, the whole team helps to move a few items to the next column.
The column set up clearly illustrates when your team has bottlenecks. A simple glance at the Kanban progress board shows your team which tasks need quick improvements. From this, teams learn to make minor changes to their working style to avoid such gridlocks in the future.
Each framework has strong benefits that can vastly improve your team’s project management style. From the outside, if your team currently stuck months behind on delivering a product - employing Scrum will get you organized and equipped to produce quick results. Kanban can be used with any other working frameworks to keep tabs on work bottlenecks.
Both Scrum and Kanban are working examples of agility. Both methods are agile process frameworks. Agility is the fundamental principle that Scrum and Kanban were made to produce. If your enterprise is looking to be more agile - try employing the methods of Scrum or Kanban to your next project.