What are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Kanban over Scrum?

If you are having trouble with choosing the right tool between Kanban and Scrum, you have landed in the right place. This article lists an in-depth explanation of the advantages and disadvantages of Kanban over Scrum. By the time you finish reading this article, you will be able to decide the right tool for your project management needs.

Agile Methodologies have gained huge popularity among Project Experts as they have made project execution and delivery simple and easy. Among all the Agile Frameworks, Kanban and Scrum are the two most important ones that are being used these days. However, Kanban offers visual workflow and continuous delivery which has more benefits in comparison to the Scrum Methodology.

In this comprehensive guide, we will see what are the key benefits of Kanban over Scrum with practical examples so that we can easily choose the right tool based on our project requirements.

What is Kanban?

The word ‘Kanban’ is a Japanese word that means ‘Visual Card’ and it was originally developed as a workflow management method in Toyota Automotive. However, it later evolved into a Project Management Method. Kanban is one of the popular ways to incorporate the Agile Principles in your Project.

It is based on the visual approach to managing the project which is one of its unique features. Kanban is an Agile Methodology in which all the tasks are represented in the form of Visual Cards in the workflow. Thus, Kanban has a flexible project management approach that includes continuous delivery and visual workflow.

What is Scrum?

Similar to Kanban, Scrum is also a Project Management approach that comes under the Agile principles. It is slightly different from the Kanban Approach as it focuses on sprint-based development with an iterative approach. It simply means that you have to plan the release of the project at the end of the iteration. You cannot continuously plan the deliverables as in Kanban.

Therefore, in Scrum, we have to manage the time-boxed iterations to execute the project tasks and activities. In simple words, Scrum follows a robust and rigid approach to managing our project.

Advantages of Kanban Over Scrum

1. Kanban is more Flexible than Scrum

Kanban allows users to make real-time updates, changes, or patches in the project workflow. This makes it more flexible in Scrum which has fixed spring durations for updating the workflow. This advantage of Kanban over Scrum is useful in cases where the project has immediate changes or updates in the workflow.

2. Kanban Delivers Continuously while Scrum Delivers Iteratively

As we know Agile focuses on iterative development of the product. However, the delivery of the increment is different in different Agile methods. In Kanban, the deliverables are shipped as soon as they are developed but in Scrum, they are shipped only at the end of the iteration. Hence, Kanban follows a continuous delivery of project outcomes.

3. Kanban Involves Flexible Roles but Scrum has Fixed Roles

In Kanban, there are no fixed roles or responsibilities defined for the project execution. Thus, tasks can be executed by anyone which saves time. On the other hand, Scrum includes the role of Scrum Master, Product Owners, and Developer team with multiple roles. Hence, we cannot progress ahead in Scrum unless we define the roles and responsibilities.

4. Kanban’s Visual Work Tracking is More Appealing than Scrum

Although the Scrum project has burndown charts and sprint backlogs, they are less accessible for some teams. However, Kanban has a visual board-based approach for task tracking that includes intuitive visual cards with swimlanes and columns. It is more appealing and can be easily accessed by various stakeholders.

5. Kanban Does Not have the Overhead of Sprint Planning like Scrum

The Scrum Principle focuses on the extensive sprint planning in the project. But sometimes, these extensive plans may cause a project delay. Kanban is advantageous in this case as it does not have any overhead of meetings or sessions to plan the sprint.

6. Kanban Predicts More Accurate Lead Time

Lead time is the time between the start of the task and its completion. Since Kanban has a continuous workflow, we can easily predict when a particular task or activity will be completed. But, in Scrum, lead time is always fixed in terms of sprint duration. This is not good in cases where the task needs earlier delivery.

7. Kanban has Reduced Work-In-Limit(WIP) Progress

Agile divides the Project into Smaller subtasks that include multiple tasks and activities to execute the project. The point of concern here is that if we do not limit the number of activities under a subtask, it will lead to an overload of tasks. Scrum has a fixed set of tasks per iteration. But, Kanban allows us to limit the number of tasks at a given time which makes workflow consistent.

8. Kanban Provides Quicker Customer Feedback

Scrum has feedback sessions at the end of the sprint but the continuous workflow of Kanban helps us to quickly deliver the project. Due to this, the project experts get enough time to gain customer insights in the form of real-time feedback. This is important for correctly evaluating and assessing the project.

Disadvantages of Kanban over Scrum

1. Kanban Lacks a Clear Explanation of Roles and Responsibilities

Some projects need a clear explanation of the roles and responsibilities of various team members in the Project execution. The disadvantage of Kanban is that it has a flexible approach of roles for planning and managing project activities. So, it is not beneficial for such projects.

2. Kanban has a Limited Planning Structure

The Kanban follows the approach of ‘Plan as you need and Execute as you go’ which has limited planning. But the Scrum Methodology has a structured and detailed approach to planning and executing the tasks. So, if the project requires detailed execution plans, using Kanban over Scrum is not feasible.

3. Kanban Depends much on Team Collaboration

As already discussed, the Kanban-based projects have a continuous workflow that needs effective communication and collaboration among the team members. However, due to the lack of fixed roles, it is very challenging to manage the collaboration among the various team members.

4. Kanban may Cause Unstable Execution due to Continuous Changes

Kanban Principles emphasize more frequent changes and updates in the package. But, too many changes and updates often lead to instability in the project execution. But Scrum involves calculated tasks under the plan, which makes the project stable. So, using Kanban over Scrum is not a good choice if the project does not require too many updates.

5. Kanban is Less Scalable than Scrum

The limited planning of the Kanban Methodology makes it less capable of accommodating a larger set of project tasks. Hence, it is not very scalable in comparison to Scrum which offers various frameworks such as SAFe to scale to larger projects.

6. Kanban is More Challenging to Adapt

The continuous delivery with a lack of defined roles aeries a strict and disciplined execution of the project. This is the reason why Kanban is more difficult to adapt for the project teams. This is a major drawback of Kanban in comparison to Scrum which pre-defines the execution plans for the team.

7. Kanban is Not Suitable for Timeline-based Projects

Time-boxed projects require fixed timelines for the project delivery. But, Kanban has a drawback in that it continually delivers the project. So, it is not suitable for the timeline-bound project. In such cases, Scrum has more advantages over Kanban due to its time-box sprints.

8. Kanban has Difficulty Defining the Sprint Goals

A Project Goal means a fixed set of tasks has to be completed under the timeline. The disadvantage of Kanban over Scrum is that we can not clearly define the sprint goals in Kanban due to the continuous delivery. So, Scrum is more beneficial for goal-based projects.

Conclusion

It can be easily concluded that both Kanban and Scrum come up with efficient Agile principles with different approaches. Scrum has rigid roles and responsibilities with time-bound sprints while Kanban has continuous delivery with flexible roles.

You have gained a clear understanding of the merits and demerits of using Kanban over Scrum. Now, you can easily identify which tool is best for your project requirements.