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You don't need Scrum, you just need to do Kanban right (2022)

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Re: You don't need Scrum, you just need to do Kanban right (2022)

#21

Post by baby »

TobyTheDog123 wrote: post #12
beoberha wrote: post #8

Is “doing Kanban” just having tasks on a board without any sort of sprint structure? I feel like it’s a bit of a false equivalence. While I won’t ever defend all the cruft that comes with Scrum, the article seems like a bit of a straw man.

I also don't fully understand what "doing Kanban" means - like you, I see Kanban as a type of board rather than a method of going through said board (maybe because of a lack of understanding of process & an over-indulgence in Trello's marketing). That being said, I would say that having a Kanban board without any sprint structure (or any attached micromeetings) would skyrocket my productivity. The two-week sprint thi…

Kanban is about organizing the work to be done and periodically revisiting the board to understand the work done and what’s next (which involves reprioritizing, pivoting, etc.)

Some people might debate on how active a kanban board should be.

Re: You don't need Scrum, you just need to do Kanban right (2022)

#22

Post by KingOfCoders »

Start with the "Why". Why would you use Scrum? I'm with Simon Wardley [1]. Agile, Lean and waterfall are not the same thing and are not exchangeable.

Agile is for building new things, it's optimized for learning and navigating in a space you don't know about (say before/around PMF) - though most people do Scrum wrong, E.g with the roadmap-anti-pattern.

Lean is for optimizing a product, after PMF, E.g. when Scaling.

Waterfall and Six Sigma is when you do the same thing over an over again and you have a lot of knowledge in the space, when you outsource commodity development, E.g. customizing a CRM.

[1] https://twitter.com/swardley/status/1215020984278888451

Re: You don't need Scrum, you just need to do Kanban right (2022)

#23

Post by dgdosen »

beoberha wrote: post #20
dgdosen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're prioritized tasks. They're pulled through. Simplicity is the structure.

I get that, that’s what I do with my team, but I’ve never heard that referred to as “doing Kanban”. Maybe I’m just being pedantic, but writing an article to say “you don’t need Scrum, just pull tasks off the board” completely misses the point of why teams use Scrum.

They're also visualized (on a kanban board) - are you doing that? Make work visible.

Re: You don't need Scrum, you just need to do Kanban right (2022)

#24

Post by irjustin »

I appreciate the article but I worry that Scrum implemented too rigidly is the reason why it gets a bad reputation.

A lot of the arguments being made are really difficult to generalize and say "this works for every org!". One example:

> When that happens, instead of designing features by committee, which demands a significant amount of back-and-forth discussions, decisions happen locally, and thus are easier to make.

This works really well when the engineers themselves have all the knowledge+ability to tackle the problem. Smaller startups are perfect! and teams that are pure technical. But once a key portion of the requirements lives outside the team, this is no longer effective because then you're building without that feedback.

The danger is trying to measure things purely on developer velocity. I'm not saying kanban is wrong or scrum is wrong, just do what's best for your org by building what's important to your business.

Re: You don't need Scrum, you just need to do Kanban right (2022)

#25

Post by beoberha »

TobyTheDog123 wrote: post #12
beoberha wrote: post #8

Is “doing Kanban” just having tasks on a board without any sort of sprint structure? I feel like it’s a bit of a false equivalence. While I won’t ever defend all the cruft that comes with Scrum, the article seems like a bit of a straw man.

I also don't fully understand what "doing Kanban" means - like you, I see Kanban as a type of board rather than a method of going through said board (maybe because of a lack of understanding of process & an over-indulgence in Trello's marketing). That being said, I would say that having a Kanban board without any sprint structure (or any attached micromeetings) would skyrocket my productivity. The two-week sprint thi…

I’ve fortunately never had to do Scrum other than an internship where I had no idea what was actually going on. We do almost exactly what you describe. We just take tasks off the board and we don’t have sprints.

Re: You don't need Scrum, you just need to do Kanban right (2022)

#26

Post by bedobi »

DanHulton wrote: post #3

Every team I've worked on that has switched from Kanban to Scrum has slowed down and never regained the previous velocity. Further, many of the promised benefits of Scrum (things like better insight and predictability about delivery rates) never materialized. Every team that I've worked on that has switched from Scrum to Kanban saw an immediate improvement in speed that never disappeared. Once, just once, I was lucky…

What you're describing has been my experience as well across multiple teams and workplaces.

Re: You don't need Scrum, you just need to do Kanban right (2022)

#27

Post by crazygringo »

DanHulton wrote: post #3

Every team I've worked on that has switched from Kanban to Scrum has slowed down and never regained the previous velocity. Further, many of the promised benefits of Scrum (things like better insight and predictability about delivery rates) never materialized. Every team that I've worked on that has switched from Scrum to Kanban saw an immediate improvement in speed that never disappeared. Once, just once, I was lucky…

But velocity of code written is not the same as velocity of value delivered.

In Scrum, estimation meetings usually result in follow-ups with stakeholders that can (and often do) radically change the stories themselves. Totally different code winds up getting delivered that increases actual value delivered, even if "lines of code written" slows.

That's the whole point of agile, to deliver value rather than code.

Re: You don't need Scrum, you just need to do Kanban right (2022)

#28

Post by [deleted] »

leetharris wrote: post #10
DanHulton wrote: post #3

Every team I've worked on that has switched from Kanban to Scrum has slowed down and never regained the previous velocity. Further, many of the promised benefits of Scrum (things like better insight and predictability about delivery rates) never materialized. Every team that I've worked on that has switched from Scrum to Kanban saw an immediate improvement in speed that never disappeared. Once, just once, I was lucky…

Yes but raw velocity is not the only thing that matters. For some projects it is, but for many the accountability of Scrum + the grouping helps with dependency management across an organization.

[deleted]

Re: You don't need Scrum, you just need to do Kanban right (2022)

#29

Post by OJFord »

TobyTheDog123 wrote: post #12
beoberha wrote: post #8

Is “doing Kanban” just having tasks on a board without any sort of sprint structure? I feel like it’s a bit of a false equivalence. While I won’t ever defend all the cruft that comes with Scrum, the article seems like a bit of a straw man.

I also don't fully understand what "doing Kanban" means - like you, I see Kanban as a type of board rather than a method of going through said board (maybe because of a lack of understanding of process & an over-indulgence in Trello's marketing). That being said, I would say that having a Kanban board without any sprint structure (or any attached micromeetings) would skyrocket my productivity. The two-week sprint thi…

This is exactly how I feel. Then we talk about 'complexity points', explicitly not time, but then say only X of them fit into a two week fixed time window. So then overflow them (or pull new work in) as required as you say anyway, it's pointless?

Whatever the management benefit supposedly is, seems like it could be achieved with declaring current (not 'sprint'^) goals, and a filter for tickets done/progressed in a given date range?

(^Even the language is depressing: sprint, ticket, points, standup, sit down, keep moving, ...)

Re: You don't need Scrum, you just need to do Kanban right (2022)

#30

Post by dgdosen »

beoberha wrote: post #20
dgdosen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're prioritized tasks. They're pulled through. Simplicity is the structure.

I get that, that’s what I do with my team, but I’ve never heard that referred to as “doing Kanban”. Maybe I’m just being pedantic, but writing an article to say “you don’t need Scrum, just pull tasks off the board” completely misses the point of why teams use Scrum.

Scrum is pushing stuff into a sprint. Kanban is pulling the highest priority stuff through - it's done when it's done.

Metrics/Analytics can be calculated when your done based on actual information, as opposed to the beginning when you're guessing, and likely to be held to your estimates.

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