Key Differences Between Scrum and Kanban

Kanban and Scrum are two methodologies which help development teams finish projects faster. While their principles differ, both frameworks adhere to the Agile software development methodology.

Kanban helps teams visualize their progress and limit the amount of work in progress, thus maximizing efficiency. With Kanban, the main focus is to ship the project as quickly as possible, making sure that the end product is of the highest quality, given the existing constrains (budget, time, etc).

Scrum teams use sprints to develop their projects. Their goal is to ask for customer feedback, and then create a new version of the product which incorporates the client's requests. They assign specific roles to team members and hold regular meetings to make sure that the project keeps moving forward.

With Scrum, new versions of the project are delivered at the end of each sprint. Most sprints range from two to four weeks, having well defined beginning and end dates. Since Scrum is based on Agile, whose first principle is "our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software", the development team must be able to ship working code fast.

Scrum development teams have two "team leaders":

- The Product Owner represents the customer, managing the backlog and helping the team prioritize the work that's being done according to the client's request;

- The Scrum Master overviews the entire process, making sure that the team obeys all the Scrum principles.

I have used quotes for "team leaders" because the team will often organize itself; every team member is equal with the others, even though some time members may have different responsibilities.

Scrum teams don't make any changes to their deliverables during a project sprint. Retrospective meetings help teams plan modifications, and then find ways to limit future changes, because this will increase the risk of not being able to deliver the product on time.

Unlike Scrum, Kanban helps teams visualize their work, and thus motivates them to get projects from the "In Progress" stage to "Done" much faster. It's the perfect methodology for teams who need to change their focus regularly. While most Kanban boards have "To Do", "In Progress" and "Done" columns, every team should feel free to create its own board.

To give you an idea, my team uses the "To Do", "Priorities", "In Progress", "Reviewed", "Done" and "Shipped" columns. This makes it easier to keep track of the features that matter most for our customers and ensure that what we've delivered is bug-free and fully functional.

The entire team collaborates, taking over responsibilities/working at tasks from the Kanban board. By setting work-in-progress limits, bottlenecks can be easily minimized. And when the number of cards in a column exceeds a predefined value, that column is caped, and all the team members join their forces with the goal of helping move the problem cards/items forward.

With Kanban, the workflow can change at any time, as new cards are added to the backlog. And project updates aren't released according to a predefined schedule, but as soon as they are ready. This means that, unlike projects that are developed using the Scrum methodology, customers will often have their products finished and shipped earlier than expected.