Scrumban

draft

Abstract

Scrumban is a project management framework, mainly used by software development teams. It is a relatively new tool which is still in a development stage. It is essentially an improved version of Scrum, which maintains its fundamental characteristics and adds Kanban principles. Some of these principles are pull system, workflow, standard work, performance metrics and continuous improvement. Contrary to popular belief, Scrumban is not exactly a mix between Scrum and Kanban, but a pathway starting at Scrum and ending at a more evolved development framework.

The idea was first introduced by Corey Ladas, a pioneer methodologist in the area of software development, who published in 2009 the book “[[Scrumban: Essays on Kanban Systems for Lean Software Development]]”. Corey Ladas defined Scrumban as a transition method for teams using Scrum. One of its most important features is that it can be implemented at any level of an organisation. Scrumban arises from some limitations detected at Scrum throughout the years and feedback from practical experience.

Ken Schwaber, co-founder of Scrum, publicly made the following statement: “I estimate that 3 out of 4 organisations using Scrum will not obtain the expected benefits out of the framework. (…) Scrum exposes the inefficiencies or dysfunctions within the product development practices at an organisation. The intention of Scrum is to make them visible in order to solve them, but unfortunately many organisations change Scrum to adapt to those inefficiencies instead of solving them.”

Mike Cohn, an Agile/Scrum community leader, also criticized Scrum teams for not being focused on finding innovative solutions to the challenges they face. Cohn was not critical at the Scrum framework itself, but at the increasing mentality among practitioners, which he considers prioritizes a safe approach for completing the tasks rather than promoting innovation.

Scrumban arose with the goal of overcoming weaknesess of Scrum, in order to transform it to a more profitable framework, combining thebest of agile and lean methods.