Scrum Vs. Kanban in project management

In project management organizing a team to effectively deliver a product can be a challenge. There are many competing management styles and different ways to utilizes resources. In this article we will provide a brief overview of the Kanban and Scrum methods and what makes them unique and effective management styles as well as when best to implement them. 

     Toyota auto manufacturers in Japan implemented the Kanban method in the 1950s as a means of dynamically attuning customer demand to production. Later the model was adapted to IT projects and managing complex tasks in project cycles.Kanban is a method for managing the creation of products with emphasis on gradual and continual delivery. It is a process which helps team members work together in a collaborative environment.  The method is based on three simple principals: 

1.     Visualize your work (dashboard) 

2.     Limit the scope of the project to short term goals building toward an ultimate goal. 

3.    Enhance the productivity by organizing priorities on an individual or group basis. 

A good benefit of this method is that individual challenges in production are visible early on in the project and team collaboration is encouraged. In a Kanban dashboard, one could visualize progress without changing the method and the focus lies on the task duration. 

On the other hand, Scrum is an agile method but it is better to think of it as a framework for managing a process, such as software development projects. In the agile Scrum world, instead of providing complete, detailed descriptions of how everything is to be done on a project, much of it is left up to the Scrum development team. This is because people working with a Scrum team know best how to solve problems as they appear. Scrum methodology calls for a planning meeting at the start of the project timeline (called the “sprint”), where team members figure out how many items they can commit to, and then create a sprint backlog – a list of the tasks to perform during the sprint. In this regard, team members should discuss what they could accomplish in a sprint and its duration. The sprint is usually two weeks up to a month. It is difficult to alter once it started. Thus, it is not flexible. Scrum has a set of roles within a defined Sprint (duration), which are: 

1.     A Scrum master (who has a different role than a project manager in the sense that he has to keep team members focused on their tasks and he does not play the coach role. 

2.     A product owner who’s responsible for prioritizing tasks and making sure they’re treated in priority order.

3.    A team who mainly is the tool to get the product finalized. 

The team is like cars on a highway where the product owners are the drivers and the Scrum master is the chief mechanic. In that sense, the Scrum Master acts as a facilitator of the product. The product owner should have a vision, availability and the authority to guide the project to its destination. The team is ‘utterly self-organizing’. 

Both methods share more or less the same dashboard style as follows: 

The ‘backlog’ section is usually a ‘to-do list’. The ‘WIP’ is literary ‘Work in Progress’ where it is visible to all team members. Then you have the test part where some tasks are put there to test the functionality of the product. What has been finished is put in the “finalized” section and “approved” section is for tasks that has been finalized and confirmed to be valid. A clear benefit to agile methods is the ability to concisely visualize all stages of the project. Clearly different agile methods are more useful depending on the type of projects. For instance, the Kanban method could be used for projects that should be executed ‘just in time’ and do not require a strict deadline for individual team members deliverables. Scrum on the other hand is more strictly adheres to deadlines which makes it better for projects with specified duration. I would recommend if implementing any of the agile method to know more about your project duration, your team, the complexity of tasks within the project and the parties implicated. A hybrid version could be adopted too depending on the project cycle. 

The following is a presentation of common points and differences between both agile methods. This is a simplified presentation and there are more agile methods to talk about and to choose from.