Boiling frogs and Lean transformation often have at least one thing in common: Do it quickly, but not quickly enough, and the subject might jump overboard. Changing behaviours, influencing culture and moving forwards on the path towards Lean or Agile is hard work. More often than not, the advice dispensed is “it depends”.
Even if Scrum is the most popular Agile framework used in software development, it is not the only approach you can use. In this article, Mark Haynes discusses why you might consider Lean Kanban as a better approach for your organization.
Scrum and Kanban can be considered as the two main Agile approaches. In a simplistic view, Scrum is often categorized as a product development framework and Kanban is preferred when you want to manage flow or maintenance activity.
At the beginning of Agile, there was a tendency to aim at “pure” Agile, following the Scrum rules by the book. Even if there might be still Scrum cargo cult implementations, many Agilists have realized that Agile is more about continuous improvement and value delivery in a specific context than staying stand-up in daily status meetings. In this article, Mark Haynes discusses the Scrumban approach that borrows tools from both Scrum and Lean Kanban.
Scrum and Kanban are not rivals. If your Scrum Sprints are getting bogged down or missing the mark, combining Scrum with Kanban might be the Agile answer. This article from Kert Peterson provides a comprehensive explanation of how Kanban can improve your Scrum process with Kanban Task Boards, Team Boards, and a better focus on customer needs.
Trello is a free on-line project management tool owned by Atlassian that provides a flexible and visual way to organize anything. This approach is naturally close to the visual boards used in the Scrum or Kanban approaches. As the tool as an open architecture, some extensions have been developed for a better implementation of Agile project management in Trello and provides additional features like Scrum burndown charts or the implementation of WIP limits.
In Kanban, the concept of work in progress (WIP) limit defines the maximum amount of work that can be performed by a team or that can exist in each active status of a workflow. In this article, Gerard Chiva explains why limiting WIP is an important decision for Agile teams.
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