Scrumban combines the principles and practices of both Scrum and Kanban to create a hybrid approach that provides teams with flexibility and adaptability while maintaining some structure.
The primary goal of Scrumban is to enable teams to minimize work batching and adopt a pull-based system. By incorporating the visual management and flow principles of Kanban, teams can have a clear visualization of their work, identify bottlenecks, and optimize their workflow.Scrumban takes the framework of Scrum and combines it with the flow-based strategies of Kanban. In Scrumban, the Scrum elements are as follows: planning out tasks at regular intervals, assessing the amount of work that can be accomplished in a sprint, prioritizing activities on demand, making sure that sufficient research has been done before development begins, and organizing tasks through the 'ready' queue. Kanban then provides additional benefits to the Scrumban approach, such as process enhancement, visualization, and new value metrics. These include a pull system and continuous workflow, WIP limits, unspecified individual roles, short lead times, process buffers and flow diagrams, a focus on cycle time rather than burndown, and the use of policies to outline steps.
One of the significant advantages of Scrumban is that it allows teams to adapt to stakeholder and production needs more easily. It provides the structure and predefined roles of Scrum, such as time-boxed iterations (sprints) and defined roles like Scrum Master and Product Owner. However, Scrumban also allows teams to pull work based on capacity and focus on completing items rather than strictly following a predefined plan.
Additionally, Scrumban can serve as a transitional methodology for teams that are looking to shift from Scrum to Kanban. It provides a middle ground, allowing teams to gradually embrace the continuous improvement and pull-based aspects of Kanban while still maintaining some of the familiar Scrum practices.
Overall, Scrumban offers teams a versatile approach to workflow management that combines the best of both Scrum and Kanban, providing flexibility, adaptability, and continuous improvement opportunities.