Developers' Success Is More Likely with Kanban

Scrum Is Over??

Both Scrum and Kanban are efficient project management frameworks, but is one better than the other? According to a statistical report, both are equal in terms of delivering successful projects but Kanban shines more in project scheduling.

It has been found that especially for smaller teams, there is a statistical significance of Kanban's efficiency. Kanban reduces planning overhead and works well for teams where members have specialized roles and different skill sets.

If you're guessing what makes it so efficient, take a look at a real-life Kanban board made from sticky notes (this is how it all began). A Kanban board is instantly recognizable due to its simple and practical flow.

Figure produced by Matthew Hodgson, under the Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license

The visual flow of this board allows team members to be aware of their own tasks, their teammates’ tasks and the status of the whole project.

Limitations = Productive Focus

Where does this efficiency come from? It actually comes from certain limitations, which allow to see the scope and the current progress of the project more clearly.

Kanban Work In Progress (WIP) limits are key to controlling the quality of work. Each step in a Kanban System can have a limit, showing how many Kanban cards can be in that step at the same time. In short, this is time-waste protection. The lower the limit is higher the throughput becomes! Having WIPs is one of the main qualities a board needs to have to be called a Kanban board.

Most Kanban boards visualize WIP limits as numbers next to the column name

Another safeguard against wasteful multitasking is implementing work item queues to prevent items from jumping ahead of each other while in the process. This is the essential safeguard against “shiny object syndrome“. Right-most and top-most items are the most important ones and should be finished first.

Priorities and Urgencies

To ensure consistent workflow, before starting up a new task make sure the backlog of tasks is reviewed and taken up only when your team's resources allow it. Usually, these tasks will share two qualities: urgency and straightforwardness.

Prioritization is another way to guarantee project success. How does Kanban prioritize? By using swimlanes. Kanban board swimlanes are the rows on the real-life sticky note Kanban board. Those rows allow you to define the tasks by visual separation. This increases documentation power for the board and tidily groups tasks according to specific classification criteria. This will reduce jumping inside the queues. Each queue also has a priority – the ones on top are the most important. It's a very helpful feature due to its intuitive visuality.

Classic example of swimlanes in action (the three rows)

Wrap Up

Elements like these are the reason why Kanban is so efficient in scheduling and delivering projects. Visual workflows help see and foresee the status of the project, adjust and react accordingly. Rarely a project is delivered steadily with no setbacks. You will encounter problems but to solve them swiftly, use a system like Kanban, designed to adapt and overcome.

Do you still use Scrum over Kanban? I would be interested to hear your arguments down below!