Kanban and Scrum - alike and apart

Hello friends, nice to catch up again on some Agile concepts. I have observed some of my peers and colleagues get confused over Kanban and Scrum. I have also heard them saying 'Ek hi toh baat hai, sab agile hai', which means 'it is the same thing, everything is agile'. Yes, both are agile frameworks, but there is a considerable difference. They can be used optimally when the difference is understood. There has been confusion around the scrum board and kanban board. It is at times though as the same thing. In this post, we will be discussing more the differences between these two and their beauty individually.

Kanban focusses on : 

• Visual board
• WIP
• completion of each item that has been started
• Quality of deliverable
• limit on WIP
• Introducing slack in the system for improvements
• cycle time, throughput

In Kanban, there is nothing like 

• Timebox in Kanban as compared to scrum. 
• Roles like that of Scrum Master and Product owner
• Sprints
• Daily Stand-up, review, planning
• velocity

Scrum and Kanban are similar as they both have

• Transparency
• Iterative work system
• rely on process flows
• aim to reduce waster

Scrum has below

• Scrum events
• Sprint
• Sprint Planning
• Daily Scrum
• Sprint Review
• Sprint Retrospective
• Scrum Roles
• Product Owner
• Scrum Master
• Development team
• Scrum Artifacts
• Product backlog
• Sprint backlog
• Product Increment

Every event in scrum is timeboxed, which means have to be finished in a specific timeframe and cant be extended beyond that. Scrum is based on empiricism. It is supported by three pillars of Transparency, inspect and adapt. Every ceremony in scrum ensures that.

So, when to use Kanban and when to use scrum?

Kanban works well along with Scrum or any other agile method. Kanban helps in visualizing the flow of work irrespective of implied methodology or framework. It provides good transparency to the flow, and helps in getting work delivered faster and more often.s