To Scrum or Not To Scrum?

Natasha Munasinghe
Sep 3, 2018 · 2 min read

A mini-dive into agile project management

Got this from @BrandonSings medium post

At Coder Academy, we were introduced to 2 possible ways we could approach running and delivering projects — Scrum and Kanban.

Both right for different circumstances.

Here’s a little synopsis of both approaches.

But before we begin — let’s define what this buzzword ‘agile’ actually means…

To be agile is to be responsive, fast and iterative in your product development.

Gone are the days when you could develop something tucked away in a corner for months or years on end. Being agile means that you work on the important tasks first, you embrace change and you communicate and collaborate with your team.

The Agile Manifesto emphasises the following …

  • Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
  • Working software over comprehensive documentation
  • Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
  • Responding to change over following a plan

So…that brings us now to Scrum.

What is Scrum?

Scrum breaks down your project tasks into user stories and ensures that your team delivers working products at the end of set intervals called sprints. Scrum is about working fast and shipping something of value to your customer/user.

When is Scrum useful?

It is useful when you need to work at pace and deliver something at regular intervals.

Downsides of Scrum?

Your team and devs need to be able to deliver something at the end of the sprint — so capacity and motivation matter. Be careful not to over-commit. You also need to make time for scrum ceremonies (meetings) regularly and it’s not advisable to change anything during a sprint.

Now let’s check out Kanban.

What is Kanban?

Kanban is about continuous development and delivery. You use a Kanban visual board shows your user story move thing each stage of the project. Kanban is about continuity and product releases are at the discretion of the team.

When is Kanban useful?

Kanban is useful for teams that have multiple project work that continuosly vary. Kanban allows you to go with the flow, changing scope (unlike Scrum).

The mantra for Kanban is that change always happens. And that, that’s OK.

Downsides of Kanban?

Kanban may hold you back when it comes to predictability and reliability for product releases as there is no fixed ship date. If you don’t get a lot of constant and continuous work requests, this may render Kanban ineffective.

There isn’t 1 ‘leader’ so you are reliant on all team members knowing what they are doing. Though flexibility is an advantage, the flip side is that you don’t know when things will get done.

….So there you have it.

A mini dive into the world of agile project management.

Footnote: Atlassian has a great (i.e. easy to read) resource on Scrum and Kanban

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