Is My Project Suitable for Kanban or Scrum?



Even though some people constantly mistake Scrum and Kanban they are significantly different. Understanding these differences is key to choosing the path that will work best for your environment. How can you know if Kanban and Scrum will be the right path for you? In order for you to know which path is the right path there are a few question you can ask yourself:

  • How long can your costumer wait?
  • How many platforms have to come together?
  • How often will stakeholders are going to affect your plan?
  • How many people do I have to work in this project?
  • Once you answer these questions you can stop to analyze which tool will be the most efficient to use according to your answers.

The charts below will help you decided which tool will work best for you:

Scrum

  • Iterative, cyclic, planned response to change
  • Manage on monthly, quarterly, annual roadmap
  • Change in priority addressed between sprints
  • Delivery content limited by number of resources and release dates

Fit with Project management

  • Budget planed based on release dates, development Estimates and resources
  • Supports cross-platform and program-level integration well
  • Target date-driven releases

Progress is Visual

  • Sprint Burn-Down
  • Release Burn-up

Kanban

  • Incremental, immediate response to change
  • Manage on “patch” or “continuous release” basis
  • Change in Priority addressed continuously
  • Delivery content limited by the number of resources


Fit with Project management

  • Budget plan based on resources
  • Supports Isolated or independent changes well
  • Target Content driven releases

Progress is Visual

  • Cumulative Flow
  • Cycle Time

Where we are seeing Agile and Kanban

Scrum

  • New Application Dev
  • Major/minor enhancements
  • Brand development
  • Marketing Campaigns

    • Large enterprises with quarterly/timed release schedules

Kanban

  • Production support
  • Bi/Report Development
  • Art Design and Production
  • Ux Design
  • Patch Releases
  • Marketing Collateral
  • Press Releases

Scrum is a tool used to organize work into small, manageable pieces that can be completed by a cross-functional team within a manageable period of time. This period of time is used to plan, organize, administer, and optimize a certain issue or issues. Kanban is a more direct way to attack an issue. Most of the times Kanban will be used when dealing with a project in which you do not have a lot of time to deliver a product or when you are working by yourself or with a small team. As you can see both Kanban and Scrum are great tools to accomplish your goals it just depends on the circumstances you are in.

If you are more interested in this issue check out our webinar called, “A Peek inside Scrum and Kanban”.

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Learn more about Agile and Scrum by visiting our Scrum FAQ page