How is Kanban different from Scrum?
Both Kanban and Scrum focus on releasing software early and often. Both require highly-collaborative and self-managed teams. There are, however, differences between the approaches:
| Kanban | Scrum | |
|---|---|---|
| No prescribed roles |  |
Pre-defined roles of Scrum master, Product owner and team member |
| Continuous Delivery | |
Timeboxed sprints |
| Work is ‘pulled’ through the system (single piece flow) | |
Work is ‘pulled’ through the system in batches (the sprint backlog) |
| Changes can be made at any time | |
No changes allowed mid-sprint |
| Cycle time | |
Velocity |
| More appropriate in operational environments with a high degree of variability in priority | |
More appropriate in situations where work can be prioritized in batches that can be left alone |
Organization, culture and team dynamics often determine which method is the best fit.
Benefits of Kanban:
Kanban and Scrum at their core are summarized by the premise: Stop Starting, Start Finishing. The entire team’s focus is on ‘getting to done’ for the tasks in progress.
Benefits:
- Shorter cycle times can deliver features faster.
- Responsiveness to Change:
- When priorities change very frequently, Kanban is ideal.
- Balancing demand against throughput guarantees that most the customer-centric features are always being worked.
- Requires fewer organization / room set-up changes to get started
- Reducing waste and removing activities that don’t add value to the team/department/organization
- Rapid feedback loops improve the chances of more motivated, empowered and higher-performing team members
