Is Scrumban just adding a Kanban board with a few other ornamental changes, or are there deeper issues that need to be addressed? What advantages do you expect to achieve by infusing your current practices with Lean Kanban?
Hybrids are problematic at best. Without principles guiding your actions, they create indecision about in which direction changes should occur. The result may be the implementation of the worst possible set of features. The foundational principles of Scrum and Lean Kanban are pretty clear. Will you violate them because it was convenient? Are you being flexible or just being ruled by the expediency of the moment?
My suggestion is to pick one and incorporate the features of the other. I mostly work with Scrum teams, but I always try to infuse a “little bit of Kanban in my life.” With that in mind, let’s assume you are already Scrum and are adding a shot of Lean Kanban to go with it.
Maybe you are experiencing a few of the following problems?
- User Stories are bogging down the board
- You have to continuously reset the sprint length due to changing release dates
- Work has to stop three days before a Sprint ends to finish testing
- Team members are always working on multiple User Stories simultaneously
Are monster User Stories eating your Scrum board? The issues raised above are all queuing problems. Maybe if you lean the Kanban way you can help your team stay focused?
Just Go with the Flow, Baby
There are quite a few advantages for going Lean.
