What is the difference between Kanban and Scrum?
Have you ever heard these terms: Kanban and Scrum. But what exactly do they mean? Isn’t Scrum a term used in rugby?
Each team implements their Kanban or Scrum processes differently, so you might encounter different strategies depending on where you go. Both frameworks come from the visual project management methodology, and both can be great ways for teams to collaborate. But before we compare these two methodologies, we must first understand what we mean when we refer to each of these terms.
Mục lục
Kanban
In general, the term Kanban refers to a visual project management strategy where work is displayed in a board-like view with columns representing stages of work. On a Kanban board, individual tasks progress through each stage until they are completed.
Read more: Work Management Software; A Priority in the Digital Age
The history of the Kanban method
Initially, the Kanban method was developed by Taiichi Ohno as a lean manufacturing method during his time at Toyota. In Japanese, Kanban is a combination of two words: 看 (Kàn), which means sign, and 板 (Bǎn), which means board. Initially, Ohno’s Kanban system used paper cards to track demand at the Toyota factory. Instead of trying to predict what demand would be and producing accordingly, his Kanban method produced and replenished products based on consumer demand.
Kanban today
The Kanban framework that Taiichi Ohno developed has been digitized, adapted, and refined over decades to become the agile project management system we know today. In essence, the modern Kanban framework is a visual online method for managing work. Today, when people say “Kanban,” they are often referring to Kanban boards—the project management view with visuals that brings the Kanban method to life.
On a Kanban board, columns represent different stages of work. In each column, visual cards, similar to the paper cards Ohno originally used at the factory, represent individual tasks.
Kanban boards are one of the most popular forms of visual project management. Like other types of visual project management, Kanban boards are sometimes more effective at providing a quick and easy overview of a project.
Read more: 10 successful multi-project management strategies
Benefits of Kanban boards
When you use a Kanban board for visual project management, you provide your team with a lot of information at a glance. If you create your Kanban board in a work management tool, the “cards” on your Kanban board, which represent individual tasks or deliverables, will also record who is responsible for the task, the due date, and any relevant tags like priority level or task type. With a work management tool, you can also expand the task card to see details, context, relevant files, and more information.
Kanban boards are a flexible way for your team to visualize the work being done. Traditionally, the columns of a Kanban board display the stages of work (e.g., To Do, In Progress, and Done), making them a popular visual project management tool for teams running ongoing processes and projects, like creative requests or bug tracking. But you can also customize Kanban board columns in your own way to represent what you want. You can create columns based on the person in charge of the task, ‘swimlanes’ and responsibilities, or deadlines.
Because they are so effective at visualizing work, Kanban boards are a key component of most project management tools. If you are looking for the right project management tool for your team, make sure it offers a Kanban-like view. Better yet, find a tool that allows you to view work in a variety of ways. For example, in the 1Office business management software, the Board view (or Kanban) is one of four ways you can view work, in addition to the Timeline view, Calendar view, and List view.
Read more: 7 tips to help you manage your time effectively at work!
Scrum
Like Kanban, Scrum is a framework that enables collaboration and the completion of high-impact work. Unlike the Kanban method, which is almost exclusively based on the visual project management pioneered by Taiichi Ohno, Scrum is a complete framework that you can “build a team” around.
History of the Scrum framework
Initially, Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka used the term “Scrum” for product development in their 1986 Harvard Business Review article: The New New Product Development Game. In the article, they introduced the Scrum framework:
“A growing number of companies are realizing that the old, sequential approach to developing new products no longer works. Instead, companies in Japan and the United States are using a holistic approach, as in rugby, where the ball is passed within the team as it moves as a unit up the field.”
Later, in 1995, Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland published The SCRUM Development Process, where they described the techniques and principles of modern Scrum. Schwaber and Sutherland would go on to research and improve their Scrum framework, which gained popularity through The Scrum Guide—a living document they update regularly. The Scrum Guide defines it as “not a process, technique, or definitive method. Rather, it is a framework within which you can employ various processes and techniques.” According to Schwaber and Sutherland, the Scrum framework helps teams continuously improve their product, their team, and their overall work environment. Scrum achieves this by encouraging teams to observe the effectiveness of their working techniques, challenging them to constantly evolve and improve them.
The Scrum framework today
Today, product, engineering, software development, and other agile teams use Scrum to get their work done faster and more efficiently. To run Scrum, teams typically designate a Scrum Master, who is responsible for running the three distinct phases of Scrum so everyone stays up-to-date on their work. The Scrum Master can be your team lead, project manager, product manager, or the person most interested in implementing the three traditional phases of Scrum:
- Phase 1: Sprint Planning. A Scrum sprint typically lasts 2 weeks, although teams can complete faster or shorter sprints. During the sprint planning phase, the Scrum Master and the team analyze the team’s backlog and select the work to be done during the sprint.
- Phase 2: Daily Scrum meetings. Throughout the Scrum sprint (also known as the Scrum “cycle”), teams traditionally meet briefly each day to review progress and ensure the assigned workload is sufficient.
- Phase 3: Sprint Retrospective. When the sprint ends, the Scrum Master holds a retrospective sprint review meeting to evaluate the completed work, direct any unfinished work to the backlog, and prepare for the next sprint.
The goal of Scrum is not to build something in two weeks, ship it, and never see it again. Instead, Scrum adopts a “continuous improvement” mindset, where teams take small steps toward larger goals. By breaking down work into smaller pieces and working on those pieces, the Scrum framework helps teams prioritize better and deliver work more effectively.
Benefits of the Scrum framework
Teams operating with the Scrum framework have clearly established rules, ceremonies, and responsibilities. Additionally, daily Scrum meetings, combined with sprint planning and reviews (or “retrospective” meetings), help teams continuously review and improve their current processes.
Based on the backlog and starting with the sprint planning meeting, the Scrum framework provides an easy, integrated structure for team leads or product managers to manage and support the team’s most important work. This built-in prioritization is combined with clearly defined responsibilities. In Scrum, your team has a predetermined and limited amount of work and time for each sprint.
Wait, so what does the term “Agile” mean?
When we talk about Kanban and Scrum, there’s often a third term that comes up frequently: Agile.
Generally, Agile teams work with the Scrum methodology and use Kanban boards—but it’s helpful to understand Agile as an umbrella term. Just as you can use a Kanban board without working in Scrum, you can also have a team that works with the Agile methodology but doesn’t adopt Scrum or use a Kanban board. Think of the Agile methodology as a philosophy for project management. Following an Agile methodology means believing in iterative and incremental development to help teams respond to change and deal with uncertainty. Both Kanban boards and Scrum boards are subsets of the Agile methodology.
The difference between Kanban and Scrum
Now that you have a clearer idea of what Kanban and Scrum are and where these two frameworks come from, let’s talk about their differences, so you can decide which one to use and when.
The Scrum framework is more specific than the Kanban method
As a specific framework, Scrum includes a specific set of “rules” that teams must follow. You can choose to modify or adjust any Scrum rules depending on your team, but initially, each Scrum will have: a Scrum Master, a product backlog, a sprint duration, regular update meetings, and a defined end for each sprint.
On the other hand, the Kanban method is often used to visualize work—any work. In fact, many teams run Scrum on a Kanban board, but in those cases, they are running the Scrum framework, not Kanban. Think of Kanban less as a “methodology” with a set of rules and more as a way to visualize work.
Scrum is time-boxed
Scrum is done in sprints, which are two-week work cycles. In a Scrum cycle, your team starts by documenting the work to be done. Then at the end of the sprint, you have a completed body of work, whatever that work may be. That doesn’t mean all teams will complete all assigned tasks in a Scrum. But the goal of Scrum is to have a deliverable at the end of your sprint.
In fact, teams that run Scrum on a Kanban board (or sometimes they are called Scrum boards) often create a new board for each Scrum sprint. There are two reasons for this:
- Teams that create a new board for each sprint can start with a blank slate. This makes it easy for the Scrum Master and the Scrum team to see the new work they have to do for each sprint.
- The Scrum Master uses previous Scrum boards to track the work done in each Scrum cycle. Since one of the main reasons teams implement the Scrum framework is for process improvement and efficiency, it can be helpful to look back and see what was accomplished.
Unlike Scrum, a Kanban board doesn’t necessarily have a start or end date. In fact, at 1Office, we primarily use Kanban boards to represent ongoing processes. With the flexible nature of these visual boards, they represent a great way to manage onboarding processes or creative job application projects that don’t have a specific deadline.
Kanban board columns can be organized in different ways
When you run a Scrum, it’s important to track work as it progresses through different stages. From the product backlog to the completed deliverable, measuring workflow is one of the key ways to keep your sprint on track and is a very important part of your daily Scrum update meetings.
But in a non-Scrum-based Kanban board, the board’s columns can represent different things, not just the status of the work. For example, you could create a Kanban board with “swimlane” columns so each member of your team can track the work they are doing. Another option would be a Kanban board with columns representing work to be done each month, or a retrospective Kanban board that records work previously done in a given month. The columns of a Kanban board can represent anything you need, unlike Scrum which has more defined rules.
Both Kanban and Scrum encourage teams to adopt a continuous improvement mindset
One of the fundamental principles of the Agile method is flexibility and continuous improvement; in fact, it’s one of the reasons why product development, engineering, and software teams are drawn to Agile-style philosophies. Continuous improvement is very much a part of the Kanban method as well as the Scrum framework.
In Scrum, instead of working on a product for a long period and then shipping it when it’s perfect, the continuous improvement process is based on the idea of “progressive finalization.” During a sprint, teams work on and ship new products, features, or tools; then continuously improve them as needed.
In Kanban, continuous improvement applies more to the team and its processes than to individual tasks. Kanban challenges teams to always look for ways to change, improve, and ultimately, evolve gradually.
Both the Kanban method and the Scrum framework can help teams collaborate
Although collaboration may look different depending on the framework your team chooses, both Kanban and Scrum are fundamentally ways for teams to work better together.
In a Scrum-like framework, the strict rules are a great way to get teams to see each other’s work. Defined roles, established meetings, and regular sprints allow any member of the Scrum team to get a quick overview of the work each team member is doing, its progress, and what is expected to be completed by the end of each sprint. Even better, if multiple teams in your company run the Scrum framework, cross-departmental teams can quickly find their bearings and understand a Scrum board, as they are all relatively similar.
Similarly, the Kanban method encourages visibility among colleagues. Once you decide what your Kanban board represents, teams can quickly and easily gather information with just a glance at the board.
When to use the Kanban method
There are no exact rules about when your team should use Kanban, Scrum, or another form of visual project management. However, a good way to decide if the Kanban method is right for you is to see if the following apply:
- Your team needs a visual project management system
- You want to quickly understand the status of a project
- You are not a member of a development, engineering, or software product team
- You work on ongoing processes and projects
- Most of your work is not completed in short timeframes
Even if you choose not to run a Scrum-like framework, you can take inspiration from it. For example, you may not want your work to be limited to two-week sprints, but keeping a backlog can help your team prioritize and better understand tasks. The best part of Kanban is that you can take what works for you and leave the rest.
When to use the Scrum framework
Scrum can be a powerful way to organize and prioritize your entire process. While not all teams thrive with Scrum, you might benefit from it in the following cases:
- You are part of an engineering, product, software development, or agile-based team
- You think your team could benefit from adopting a slightly more rigid structure
- You have a large backlog of tasks
- Your team is motivated by short deadlines and quick turnarounds
- A member of your team wants to be the Scrum Master
Remember: you can always run a Scrum framework on a Kanban board. To hold effective daily stand-ups and achieve excellent sprint planning and retrospectives, you need a clear way to see work through its stages and track all work in progress. A Kanban board can help you tackle your sprint backlog and organize your workflow within the sprint, so every Scrum cycle is a success.
Kanban or Scrum? Which is better?
The good news is you don’t have to choose one or the other. If your team is comfortable with the Scrum framework, you can visualize your Scrum workflow on a Kanban board. Alternatively, if you’re not sure you need the entire Scrum framework, that’s fine too. You can use a Kanban board to keep your team organized and agile.
The most important thing is to find a framework—and a tool—that works for you. So, whether you’re using a Scrum or Kanban framework, make sure your work management system is flexible enough to support your team, so they can do their best work.
See more:
Work Management and Project Management: What’s the Difference?
