Overview of Scrum , Kanban & Scrumban

Overview

Agile is a time boxed, iterative approach to software delivery that builds software incrementally from the start of the project, instead of trying to deliver it all at once near the end. Agile Development is an umbrella of terms for iterative and incremental methodology.

What does it mean to be Agile?

?      Focus on Delivering Value Early and Often - de-scale problems into smaller parts and deliver solutions on a regular basis

?      Deliver through Small Autonomous teams which work very closely together and are empowered to get the work done

?      Instead of focusing on time, focus on measuring and optimizing the flow of work end to end and remove impediments or unnecessary bureaucracy

?      Instead of focusing on scope, focus on discovering quality using fast feedback & release products out there, get them in use and adapt to customer feedback

?      Giving individuals and teams the time and space to Experiment, build confidence and find good solutions to problems

?      Use Value propositions as a means of defining, prioritising and understanding our work

SCRUM

Scrum is a rugby term to stress the importance of working as a team in complex product development. Scrum is a framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems, while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value.

?      Scrum itself is a simple framework for effective team collaboration on complex products. Scrum co-creators Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland have written The Scrum Guide to explain Scrum clearly and succinctly. This Guide contains the definition of Scrum. This definition consists of Scrum’s roles, events, artefacts, and the rules that bind them together. Scrum is Lightweight ,Simple to understand and Difficult to master.

?      Scrum describes a set of meetings, tools, and roles that work in concert to help teams’ structure and manage their work.

?      Scrum is best suited in the case where a cross functional team is working in a product development setting where there is a non-trivial amount of work that lends itself to being split into more than one 2 – 4week iteration.

?      Values of Scrum : Commitment, Courage, Focus, Openness and Respect.

?      Principles Of Scrum : Transparency, Inspection and Adaptation

Roles of Scrum

Product Owner

Scrum Master

A Member of the Scrum Team. Acts as a servant leader. Expert in Scrum Processes. Coaches the Scrum Team to follow Scrum Processes and Ceremonies. Helps identify, resolve and raise impediments to progress to the Sponsorship of the Project.

 Key Accountabilities of the Scrum Master

·        Finding techniques for effective Product Backlog management

·        Helping the Scrum Team understand the need for clear and concise Product Backlog items

·        Understanding product planning in an empirical environment

·        Ensuring the Product Owner knows how to arrange the Product Backlog to maximize value

·        Understanding and practicing agility

·        Facilitating Scrum events as requested or needed

·        Coaching the Development Team in self-organization and cross-functionality

·        Helping the Development Team to create high-value products

·        Removing impediments to the Development Team’s progress

·        Coaching the Development Team in organizational environments in which Scrum is not yet fully adopted and understood.

Scrum Team

The Scrum team also called as the development team is a self organizing team consisting of more than 2 but less than 10 resources necessary to deliver a potentially shippable increment at the end of each Sprint. The skills required from those in the development team might include coding, testing, documenting, training, compliance, architecture etc… It is highly recommended that the development team be co-located with the Scrum Master. 

Key Accountabilities of the Development Team

·        Accountable for delivery of a potentially shippable increment at the end of each Sprint. Example activities might include…

·        Turning Product Backlog Items into increments of potentially releasable functionality

·        Estimating its velocity and "pulling" work into the sprint that it estimates it can complete

·        Attendance at all Scrum meetings; Sprint planning, Daily Scrums, Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective

·        Scrum recognizes no titles for Development Team members other than Developer, regardless of the work being performed by the person; there are no exceptions to this rule

·        Individual Development Team members may have specialized skills and areas of focus, but accountability belongs to the Development Team as a whole

Scrum KPI’s and Metrics

Scrum KPIs have three major goals:

·        To measure deliverables of the scrum team and understand how much value is being delivered to customers.

·        To measure effectiveness of the scrum team; its contribution to the business in terms of ROI, time to market, etc.

·        To measure the scrum team itself in order to gauge its health and catch problems like team turnover, attrition and dissatisfied developers.

Kanban

Kanban (in Japanese mean signboard or billboard) is a lean method to manage and improve work across human systems - Originating from manufacturing.

Kanban is a method for managing the creation of products with an emphasis on continual delivery while not overburdening the development team. Both Kanban and Scrum focus on releasing software early and often. Both require highly collaborative and self-managed teams.

Below image shows the core properties of Kanban and Kanban board:

• Shorter cycle times can deliver features faster.
• Responsiveness to Change.
• When priorities change very frequent, Kanban is ideal.
• Balancing demand against throughput guarantees that most of the customer-centric features are always being worked.
• 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 

Note: There is no Prescribed roles in Kanban.

Scrum Vs Kanban

Scrumban

Scrumban methodology combines the best features of both Scrum and Kandan and can be used for development and maintenance projects. Scrumban allows augmenting of Scrum with Kanban practices to progress towards a more recognisably lean workflow.

Features

Best Environment for Introducing Scrumban:

You may be wondering what environment is best for introducing Scrumban. As with all methodologies, Scrumban is not for every environment or culture. If your organization is optimally suited for Scrum, with many experienced members, customers who want to participate in the development process, a clear understanding of user stories, and your corporate culture is one where defined project management and timelines are highly regarded, you may want to adopt Scrum. If you are primarily operating in a maintenance environment in which new development is a small part of the team’s activities, the work is ongoing, pulling tasks as needed is important, and there are no projects defined for specific customers, you may want to adopt Kanban.

The best time to implement Scrumban is when:

·        A project has a great deal of unexpected change to user stories and reworking of priorities.

·        You want to add pull features to the Scrum development process.

·        Scrum has been unsuccessful due to large volume of issues or because there are not enough resources to meet the time constraints of Scrum.

·        The work is event-driven, such as help desk support, where priorities shift constantly.

·        The team is entirely focused on adding features and supporting an existing product.

·        Scrum is utilized by your development team, but you are interested in some principles of Kanban.

·        You find some of the rigidness of Scrum limits your team’s ability to adapt to change.

·        You’re transitioning to Kanban but need to make small methodology changes in order to limit disruption.

The final word on Scrumban is always going to be how the team responds to the method. Scrum works well for teams that like more structure and want to know what they will be working on tomorrow. The main benefit of Scrumban is the fluidity of the model. In the end, as is the case with any development methodology, company and team buy-in will determine success.

 REFRENCES

The material was prepared from experience and reference from below sites:

•  Agile Alliance
• Scrum Alliance
• Lean kit
• Smart Sheet
• Scrum.Org
• Scrum.inc