Kanban and Scrum are attempting to do the same thing, which is advance the state of the art in work management; mainly, but not exclusively, in the area of knowledge work and both are heavily influent by value systems. Scrum primarily by the Agile Manifesto, while Kanban from a Lean Value System; although, it also takes pieces from the Manifesto. Kanban and Scrum aim to improve work management and to deliver in increments, in such a way that it allows increment return on investment, mitigating risk and make the most of the learning process. In this article, I am going to compare Kanban and Scrum from my experience of working with both and I don’t want to say which one is better as I believe each one has its advantages and disadvantages.
Learning
Although Kanban and Scrum encourage learning and improving as fundamental key practices, there is a difference between their learning process. In Scrum, learning and improvement happen at the end of the sprint and in the sprint retrospective which development team discuss what went well and what should be improved. On the other hand, Kanban somehow follows the Deming circle for learning with the plan, do, study, and adapt steps. With Kanban, you must have explicit policies that define your workflow, which greatly improves learning by team members, which occurs because discussions take place daily on how work should be done. In Scrum learning occurs during retrospections.
Iteration
While Kanban and Scrum aim to deliver in the increment(s) in each iteration, there is a fundamental difference between iteration. In Scrum, each iteration is called a sprint, which is short, time-boxed of one month or less during which a scrum team works to complete a set amount of work. On another hand, Kanban does not deliver in time box sprints, but instead, it delivers continuously in focused efforts, which are convenient both for developers and stakeholders as it provides quicker results with fewer variables and overall effort.
Work
Kanban and Scrum follow the Work in Progress limiting method, but with different point of view. In Scrum development team can only work on sprint backlog tasks which they selected for the active sprint. Kanban core practice is to manage and limit the amount of work in progress. This helps the team focus and deliver often, avoiding delays created by new work. Kanban works in what can be described as a state of flow; very small increments limiting what’s in progress at a single point in time continuously delivering value to the business. Also, In Scrum, it is forbidden to add new items during a sprint, but in Kanban team can take on new items only if they have the capacity.
Team
The team is the core part of all process in Kanban and Scrum. Scrum has three different roles which are Product Owner, ScrumMaster and the Development Team. The product owner is responsible for vision and priorities. The ScrumMaster is the facilitator and the development team build increments. In Kanban, there are no changes in terms of roles. This forbids less impact on the team. In terms of specialization, in Scrum the team members tend to be cross-functional, which means that they should have the skills required to complete the work committed within each iteration. On the other hand, Kanban tends to prefer specialization. So as soon as there is capacity, a new task is selected that could be carried out successfully. In Scrum, it is common that a single team owns the whole process. In Kanban, multiple teams can collaborate through the multiple different stages of the workflow.
Estimation
Estimation is a complete difference between Scrum and Kanban. In Scrum development team estimate items before they are selected in the backlog grooming meeting. This allows the development team to choose what they believe they can commit for the upcoming sprint, which is much different with what will happen in Kanban, where estimation is optional and items can be selected more for the value they add to the organization then for how long it takes to execute them.
Thanks for reading the Scrumsaturday.com! Take a minute to follow me on Twitter if you enjoyed this post and want to see more.
Most commented