Differences between Scrum and Kanban

After over eight years of software product management in different industries (web portals, banking, payment, etc.), I worked with different software development methodologies – from waterfall approaches to agile models such as Scrum or Kanban. In my opinion, every approach has its right to exist and might be the best possible solution in a given situation, depending on the type of project, culture, requirements, degree of maturity of all involved people, etc. I really love working with Scrum or Kanban and recently wanted to come up with a summary of all differences between these two methodologies, since lines seem a bit blurred here in my opinion. Here’s what I come up with:

  • Artifacts: Scrum board, backlog, different types of requirement hierarchies (e.g. theme, epic, story, task), burn-down chart, velocity, etc. in Scrum vs. only a board in Kanban.
  • Iterations: Yes (sprints) for Scrum vs. no (a continuous flow) for Kanban.
  • Estimations: Yes for Scrum vs. no (items of similar sizes) for Kanban.
  • Changes: To be defined, groomed and estimated for the next sprint in Scrum vs. added to the board as needed in Kanban.
  • Roles: Product Owner, Scrum Master and Team in Scrum vs. Team and other needed roles in Kanban.
  • Teams: Cross-functional in Scrum against teams which can be specialized in Kanban.
  • Ceremonies: Sprint planning, daily stand-up, sprint review and sprint retrospective in Scrum vs. daily stand-up, regular reviews and retrospectives on set dates and continuous planning in Kanban.

First summary of my Kanban kick-off training

As posted before, I attended a one-day Kanban kick-off training held by Dr. Klaus Leopold from LEANability. I have to think it over a few more times, but I can definitely say that I found it very interesting. As other methods, Kanban itself does not solve fundamental problems you might face in your organisation – such as lacking motivation, unclear goals, changing priorities and things like that. What it does, is to provide lots of transparency which helps you to find problems in your working process. I am going to sum up my notes and write another blog entry in the following days!

Go Kanban!

Today, I signed up for a one-day Kanban kick-off seminar in November. I’m really looking forward to learn more about this agile method and see how if it can be combined best with Scrum. Let’s see!