Kanban and scrum always go hand-in-hand with project management so making an individual distinction to pick one tool is rather hard. But still, we are going to try and see what these terms mean for project management and what are the key differences between both tools.
It is seen that some scrum teams use kanban as a visual tool whereas others prefer to use scrum tools alone. The professionals who use both tools together defend their approach by saying that using kanban principles provides additional visibility to their projects. On the other hand, the single scrum tool users claim that the scrum tool is enough to reduce the ambiguity in the project and no more tools are necessary.
In this article we’ll go through:
- What is Scrum
- What is Kanban
- Differences between Kanban and Scrum
- Best Tools for Scrum and Kanban
- Final Words
Well, now figuring out which methodology works best is a daunting task. But we shall give it a try by simplifying them into whats and whys. So let’s get started now, shall we?
What is Scrum?
Scrum is a project management process by breaking down into small, readily workable chunks. The goal of Scrum is to produce a “Done” product at the end of each sprint, which can then be delivered to the customer.
Scrum has been around since 1986 and has been used in software development projects since then. Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland developed it from Sutherland Consultancy.
The original Scrum framework was developed to help software development teams meet their deadlines while improving quality, reducing technical debt, and increasing efficiency.
Scrum is now used in many different areas including manufacturing, services, and healthcare.
When to use Scrum?
Nowadays, the most common approach to software development is agile project management which runs for around 12 months. If you have a team of fewer than four people, Scrum may be the best option for your company. It allows you to have a continuous improvement process that focuses on improving the customer experience at all times.
However, if you have a large team, or if you have customers who require more time-consuming iterations, then Kanban may be more suitable for your needs.
What is Kanban?
Kanban is a lean and agile project management method that’s been used for decades in the manufacturing industry. It’s now gaining popularity in the software development world.
Kanban is an acronym for “cardboard”. It’s a visual representation of work in progress: cards with limited capacity (just one card at a time)that can move through the system when empty or full. It’s a simple way to visualize more complex projects, such as software development projects.
The main benefit of Kanban over traditional project management methods like Waterfall is its focus on flow, where all your work moves forward continuously rather than waiting until the last-known good state has been achieved. In Kanban, this means that you don’t get stuck waiting for something to happen before you can move on; code doesn’t sit idle in your backlog because there isn’t enough capacity or money to do something about it yet. Instead, you can keep working on features as soon as they’re finished without worrying about whether there are enough resources available to complete them at some point in the future.
Kanban also helps you build better products by making sure they’re always up-to-date and accessible from anywhere, which makes them easier to maintain and update later down the line when needed.
When to use Kanban?
The Kanban methodology has become a popular way to structure agile teams, as it helps them focus on the most important work and gives them a flexible system to manage their work.
There are two major reasons why you should use Kanban for your projects:
To improve the productivity of teams – Kanban helps the team focus on what matters most while leaving less time for lower-priority tasks and activities. In addition, Kanban allows the team to focus on a single product backlog item at a time. This allows them to make progress more quickly and easily identify when they’re stuck in a particular stage of development.
To improve transparency – By using Kanban boards and cards, teams can quickly see where they stand in terms of their current tasks, as well as how much work is left to complete before the delivery date. This helps the team communicate with each other about how much work remains until the completion date and how much time remains until the delivery date.
Differences between Kanban and Scrum
Kanban and Scrum are both Agile methodologies, but they have some key differences.
The methodology of Kanban is more of a visual approach to problem-solving, while Scrum is based on the time-boxed development cycle.
Kanban focuses on flexibility, which is important for large multi-team projects, whereas Scrum focuses on discipline, which is important for smaller teams or solo developers.
You can manage your work with a kanban board which happens to be a visual tool for management purposes. It shows work progress and helps the team to prioritize tasks, organize them, and make better decisions.
On the other hand, Scrum is a framework that helps teams deliver high-quality software at the speed of customer value. It consists of a set of rules and principles that help teams improve agility by breaking down complex projects into small pieces, completing them in iterations with short feedback loops, and continuously releasing working software into the marketplace.
Kanban software allows you to continuously analyze your workflow because it relies on continuous improvement. Whereas the scrum will help you gauge how close you are to achieving your goals because it relies on story point planning.
Best Tools for Scrum and Kanban
1. Standuply Standup Bot
When used in conjunction with Slack, the bot known as Standuply facilitates virtual standups and polls for teams. There are now many teams that span many time zones and locations. So Standuply is the best collaboration tool to grapple with a host of factors such as hosting regular remote meetings on Scrum, Project Management, Kanban Task Report, Sales, HR & Team Culture topics.
Committing to daily team meetings, when members share the obstacles they experience and coordinate their efforts to attain their goals, has grown increasingly challenging. Standuply is a tool that facilitates all Scrum & Kanban Project Management meetings by sending out questions to a team, collecting their responses, and allowing users to see an archive of meeting data.
Take a look at all the unique features for Project management up to Standuply’s sleeve!
2.Miro
Mito is perfectly designed to implement the best agile practices into teams’ daily routines. It does this by visualizing your team workflow. When used to manage work tasks, Miro allows every team member to view the status of all tasks within your flow of work.
Miro enables all of your team members to:
- contextualize and prioritize each work item.
- get more done and produce better results as a team
- represent work items and columns to represent the stages of the work process
And more fascinating features you find on the Miro website.
In general, Miro is a project management tool in great demand. It helps maximize efficiency and optimize the flow of any agile team.
3.Trello
Trello provides movable, flexible, and visible features for work management and project management and can help get your Scrum and Kanban practices off the ground. Running them on a Trello board helps give work more direction, ensures you’re focused on tasks that add value, and tracks your measurable progress week over week.
With Trello assistance, you can:
- Set up your Scrum or Kanban listsÂ
- Plan your sprints, retros, work to be done, etc
- Monitor team progress with dashboards, tables, and timelines
- Add clarity with color-coded labels
- Get granular and concise with checklists
- Easily assign task ownership and responsibility
- Export data from Trello to create sharable reports
Come and see more benefits on Trello product blog.
Final words
It seems that both of these tools are very efficient in project management and both of them can yield effective results even if used alone. Now, we already discussed in this article when you could use the Kanban and Scrum tools individually. So it would be clear enough what conditions or requirements would lead you to pick a particular tool for your project.
However, don’t hold back if you see the need of using both of these tools together because achieving your goals is more important than claiming which one is more powerful in Kanban vs Scrum.
