Scrumban

Scrumban is a project management framework, developed for project and task tracking, mainly used by software development teams. In a global, uncertain, unpredictable, highly competitive and fast-changing marketplace, long term scope is difficult to define. A contextual framework is necessary for an effective adoption and tailoring of development practices in response to the changing needs of the environment. That is why new trends are emerging in project schedule management. Scrumban is an on-demand scheduling system or adaptative planning -defined plan but adaptable priorities- for project management, as a result of the addition of Lean features to an Agile framework (Scrum).

Agile approaches such as Scrum are dominant tools in software development today. However, problems such as poor preparation, poor project management, and insufficient understanding continue still exist in software projects. In response to them, new concepts such as Scrumban that incorporate principles of contemporary Lean thinking are proving to be a solution for continuous improvement in software projects by providing an end-to-end focus, unique to the Lean methodology. Scrumban is a useful framework for managing software projects as it results in a continuous and smooth flow of value-creating activities throughout the entire development process, and it emphasizes the continuous movement of valuable work, instead of a sequence of discrete tasks. It is reported that flow techniques demonstrate higher productivity in comparison to time boxed sprints in the Scrum method, which interrupt the fluent flow of work.

Scrumban is essentially an improved version of Scrum, which maintains its fundamental characteristics and incorporates principles from Kanban. Contrary to what its name could suggest, it is not exactly a 50-50 mix between Scrum and Kanban, but an adaptation starting at Scrum and ending at a more evolved framework. Due to the acquisition of Kanban features, Scrumban has proven to be more appropiate than Scrum in terms of project management, due to time saving, quality improvement and waste minimization.

Main Idea

Introduction

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. Scrumban arises from some limitations detected at Scrum throughout the years and feedback from practical experience, which will be commented later. As an overview, some of the key Scrumban practices are the following  :

Visualization: The working board is available at all times for all individuals.

WIP limits: Workflow is organized in a Kanban-like project management way.

Flow management: It is easy to see when a task is stuck as the flow is visual.

Clear rules: There are no defined roles, the Team decides how to manage interactions.

Feedback: Implemented through the entire organization, focused on increasing value and reducing waste.

Continuous improvement: Value is created by the collective ideas from every individual.

To sum up, Scrumban arose with the goal of overcoming weaknesess of Scrum, in order to transform it to a more profitable framework, combining the best of Agile and Lean methods. It combines the prescriptive nature of Scrum to be Agile and the process improvement from Lean to guarantee high delivered quality standards. Therefore, in order to understand Scrumban it is helpful to have some basic knowledge of both Scrum and Kanban concepts. A brief introduction of Scrum and Kanban is exposed next, prior to explaining Scrumban into detail.

What is Scrum?

Scrum framework overview.

Scrum is a software development framework, the most well-known among all. It has been a popular framework in software development teams since the early 1990s. At teams using Scrum, participants select items (loads of work) of high priority from the Product Backlog, a list with tasks assigned to the team. The Development Team oversees completing those assessments within the duration of a work cycle, called Sprint. The selected item is called Sprint Backlog. One of the main goals of the framework is to make each Sprint more effective than the previous one. Once a sprint ends, completed items are delivered and non-completed items are returned to the Product Backlog.

Teams In most of the cases, from 3 to 9 people. The digit can vary depending on the organization or specific project, but in general the number of team members is small, which is appropiate for carrying out small-medium sized projects.

Roles Individuals at teams have different roles, which are the Scrum Master, Product Owner and Development Team. There is a hierarchy at the organizations in terms of management and decision making.

Meetings Each sprint begins with a Sprint Planning Meeting arranged by the Scrum Master, to which all members of the team are called. Other stakeholders may also be part of the Sprint Planning Meetings. Daily Scrums or short meetings are also held every day, where all team members reunite.

Work cycles Teams using Scrum work in 1-to-4-week periods or cycles, called Sprints. These periods last for 2 weeks in most of the cases. The Sprint terms are fix and the tasks must be delivered within the defined timeslot.

What is Kanban?

Kanban set of principles overview.

The first Kanban system was introduced by Taiichi Ohno for Toyota Automotive in 1940s. Kanban is a continuous process, unlike sprints in Scrum. It is a set of principles applicable to a broad diversity of situations. In this case, work items are pulled directly from the Product Backlog. Each of the columns from the board has a strict limit of Work In Progress (WIP). This is to ensure items are pulled throughout columns within the minimum time. A column with empty spots is an indicator to pull items from the previous column. In a Kanban context, products are delivered as soon as they are done. Continuous revisions are made to guarantee the process gets more efficient and effective in order to improve the quality of the results. The results of the work delivered by the team are always subject to improvement, no matter how good they still are.

Teams There are no limitations in teams size. Kanban features are applicable to a wide range of projects and contexts.

Roles No specifications about roles of team members. Although one -or a few- individuals may take the role of coaches, in general terms there is not a defined hierarchy within teams.

Meetings Daily Standup meetings where all team members are present.

Work cycles There are no time-based iterations, the workflow is continuous. The delivered quality is in all cases subject to improvement, and therefore tasks are not subject to beginning and ending dates.

Benefits of Scrumban

In Corey Ladas' words, Scrumban is a more evolved framework than Scrum, overcoming its limitations. These limitations, set out in the following sections, have been the subject of speech by some of the experts in the methodology.

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.

Although Scrumban also has some limitations which will be exposed later, the application of Kanban features really make Scrumban an efficient project management framework in terms of complexity management. The following chart exposes some of the limitations of Scrum, how Kanban principles tackle them and the resulting features at a Scrumban framework.

Limitation of Scrum	Input from Kanban	Benefits of Scrumban
No lead time management	Just-In-Time	Decisions are taken and work is done when is needed
No indicators of work items in process at a time	Work In Process (WIP) limits	Work overload is avoided
Restricted team size	No limitations in team member quantity	Variety of roles in a team is not limited
No workflow management within sprints	Work Flow Management (WFM)	Internal workflow managed by assigning state to each work item (In Progress, Done)
No vision about internal state of work	Work In Process (WIP)	Visualization of work items that are active and in process
Limited iterative approach	Continuous integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)	All work and processes are subject to a continuous improvement

Applications

The purpose of establishing a framework is to align resources and processes to the organization’s strategies and objectives. Adaptive frameworks like Scrumban ensure alignment with environmental competitiveness and confront increasing complexity associated with goal attainment and decision making. [b] Although Scrumban framework might not be as widely known as Scrum yet, the increasing demand for digital products-services and the high competition that companies face are key factors for the implementation of Scrumban at software development projects. The new framework is an interesting tool to be considered by executives and managers for their teams, especially in the case of new technology-based firms (NTBFs), also known as start-ups. According to an study, many entrepreneurs apply Lean concepts and Agile approaches combined at project management for the development of new products, as they provide sets of practices which support a proactive search for new opportunities.

As mentioned previously, Scrumban -just like its core methodology Scrum- is a software management framework, which is especially directed to software development teams, although it could also be used for the management of other types of projects. Esentially, there are 2 potential situations in which Scrumban could be implemented. On the one hand, at organizations or teams currently working with Scrum which are trying to overcome its limitations or upgrade the method. This is the most likely situation. On the other hands, organizations which have never worked with Scrum or Scrumban. Although these teams might not be able to recognize the differences between Scrum and Scrumban, and probably will require more time to dominate the new framework, they are perfectly up to start to use Scrumban without previous Scrum experience.

Scrumban framework is especially useful at projects that evolve the product incrementally in operational or maintenance environments . Individuals choose tasks for themselves. There is higher equality among all individuals and it is harder to track the effort of contribution of each person.

It is especially important for Team Managers to recognize these limitations or weaknesses of Scrumban framework in order to consider how they could affect their specific project. Once they have been detected it is easier to anticipate and come up with solution to tackle them. In fact, every project is different and the described limitations could affect in a higher or lower extent to the project. Clarifying them and ensuring team members to be aware of them is a good way to minimize their impact.

Annotated bibliography

The references provided next may be consulted for further reading on the topic of software project management framework Scrumban.

• Ladas, C. (2009) Scrumban: Essays on Kanban Systems for Lean Software Development. Lean Series. Seattle WA: Modus Cooperandi Press.

-First book explaining the fundamentals of Scrumban, written by the methodologist who first conceived the method. Ladas explains how agile methodologies such as Scrum have helped software developers to be more efficient, while at the same time there is still room for more benefits. Lean methods such as Kanban can make these processes even more powerful and profitable. The author provides essays for real-world cases to give teams the background to create more robust practices.

• Bhavsar, K. et al. (2020) Scrumban: An Agile Integration of Scrum and Kanban in Software Engineering, International Journal of Innovative Technology and Exploring Engineering (IJITEE), vol. 9, issue 4. ISSN: 2278-3075.

-This recently published paper exposes how emerging software engineering technologies seek an Agile process and framework for their management at an organisational level. The authors explain the limitations of Scrum, and how the formation of hybrid framework Scrumban can be a solution to the challenges of Scrum, considering as well the limitations of Scrumban.

• Reddy, A. (2015) The Scrumban [r] evolution: getting the most out of Agile, Scrum, and lean Kanban. Addison-Wesley Professional.

-The author explains the role of Kanban as a catalyst to increase the value of existing software development processes, augmenting the benefits of Scrum. It is a comprehensive, coherent and practical book in order to help teams to implement Scrumban and get the most out of it.

• Straughan, G. (2017) "Development That Pays: Scrumban", Software Project Management

-I would like to make a special mention to Gary, whose content regarding Scrumban, both in his YouTube channel and his website (Development That Pays) was very useful for me to understand the concept at the very beginning. I highly recommend his contribution to everyone who has never heard about Scrum and Scrumban before.

References

Made by Xabi Martínez de Zabarte (s210323)