Kanban VS Scrum: Which One is Better?

Scrum and Kanban are used interchangeably in project management. There are vital differences between the two. Understanding which is better is key to choose the direction that will work best for your environment. Questions like what is suitable for my project put managers in problem about which framework to choose.

Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Without getting too detailed. Let’s discuss the difference between Kanban and Scrum.

Let’s jump in:

What is Scrum?

A tool designed to organize work into manageable pieces that can be finished by a team in a stipulated time period. It works well for any complex scope of work. Scrum depends on three prescribed roles, which are the scrum master, the team members and product owner. It provides a small set of rules that generate enough structure for team to be able to emphasize their innovation on solving what may otherwise be an impossible challenge. Scrum also gives power to the team to commit to the needs as per their capability.

What is Kanban?

Kanban is another different framework that is used for companies and teams to visualize their work and remove bottlenecks and obtain dramatic operational improvements in terms of quality. Almost any business function can take advantage of Kanban to achieve significant benefits like increased throughput, reduces lead time and higher quality of services delivered.

Both strive to improve quality along with productivity and bring effectiveness in the company. Have a look at a few differences.

Scrum vs Kanban

• Commitment

Commitment for team following scrum is required to specific amount of work, whereas for kanban teams, it is optional. Teams work in the natural speed.

• Iteration

The scrum team is rendered with an arranged list of story points that require to be finished to deliver a shippable product. No items can be added to ongoing iterations as scrum places heavy focus on its schedules. While the Kanban method is iterative in nature. And the new items can be added whenever capacity is available.

• Task devotion

The whole team is dedicated to each task on scrum board. On the other hand, a team is not responsible for all the tasks on Kanban board. Each one is responsible for his/her task. If someone has finished his task while there is something difficult in testing, he/she can decide what to do: either help the tester to finish the task or take another activity from the list.

• Ownership

Kanban board is not owned by a specific team, while scrum board is owned by one team at a time. Each team has all the essential knowledge to successfully finish all the tasks during the sprint.

• Roles and responsibilities

On scrum team, three roles are given in order to efficiently process the work: scrum master, team members and product owner. Each role defines its own responsibilities. For Kanban projects, someone has to be a project manager or a supervisor. A team is not needed to be cross-functional because the workflow is done to be used by all teams involved in the project.

Scores of organizations have adopted either scrum or Kanban for their project. Some of the firms are using Scrum like Google, Apple, Valve and Amazon While some like Zara, HP and Pixar have chosen Kanban. It is noted that both have pros and cons. Scrum is perfect for large projects whereas Kanban works well with smaller projects.

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