Scrum vs Kanban: applicability

Kanban and scrum are frameworks that help teams adhere to agile principles and get stuff done.

Agile is a structured and iterative approach to project management and product development. It recognizes the volatility of product development, and provides a methodology for self-organizing teams to respond to change without going off the rails.

Kanban is all about visualizing your work, limiting work in progress, and maximizing efficiency(or flow). Kanban teams focus on reducing the time it takes to take a project(or user story) from start to finish. They do this by using a kanban board and continuously improving their flow of work.

	Scrum	Kanban
Cadence	Regular fixed length sprints (ie, 2 weeks)	Continuous flow
Release methodology	At the end of each sprint	Continuous delivery
Roles	Product owner, scrum master, development team	No required roles
Key metrics	Velocity	Lead time, cycle time, WIP
Change philosophy	Teams should not make changes during the sprint.	Change can happen at any time

When to use Kanban

• Scrum doesn’t work well with your team (fail with sprint delivery)

• Priorities can’t be frozen

• No general picture of progress

• Working overtime

Otherwise, use Scrum!