Kanban and Scrum Part 2 — The Board
We previously wrote an article where we spoke about the main differences between Kanban and Scrum, if you are curious about this story, you can find it on the link below:
In this article, we are going to speak about one of the most important parts of Kanban and Scrum, the Board.
The Kanban Board
A kanban board is an agile project management tool designed to make your work visible, so you can show it to others and keep everyone on the same page, limit work-in-progress, and maximize efficiency. Kanban boards use cards, columns, and continuous improvement to help technology and service teams commit to the right amount of work, and get it done!
Kanban boards can be broken down into five components: Visual Cards, Columns, Work In Progress Limits, a Commitment Point, and a Delivery Point.
Visual Cards: For agile teams, each card (stickies, tickets, or otherwise) could encapsulate one user story. Once on the board, these visual signals help teammates and stakeholders quickly understand what the team is working on.
Columns: Each column represents a specific activity that together defines a “workflow”. They can be as simple as “Queue” for the work that needs to be done; “In Progress” for the work that has been retrieved from the queue and is currently being worked on and “Done” for the work that has been completed.
Work In Progress (WIP) Limits: WIP limits are the maximum number of cards that can be in one column at any given time. A column with a WIP limit of three cannot have more than three cards in it. These WIP limits are critical for exposing bottlenecks in the workflow and maximizing flow. WIP limits give you an early warning sign that you committed to too much work.
Commitment Point: Kanban teams often have a backlog for their board. The commitment point is the moment when an idea is picked up by the team and work starts on the project.
Delivery Point: The delivery point is the end of a kanban team’s workflow. For most teams, the delivery point is when the product or service is in the hands of the customer.
The Scrum board
A scrum board is also an agile project management tool for tracking the work done, in short, incremental sprints. They are designed specifically for completing specific user stories and tasks within a specific time frame. You’ll want to use a scrum board if your team develops based on iterations or sprints.
There is no set format for setting it up, it is left to the team to decide how to present the information that is needed. Most of the time the teams use visual cards and columns in the same exact way as the Kanban Scrum. A scrum board may include these columns:
To Do: The prioritized backlog of product features is planned for the current sprint.
In Progress: The list of tasks that have been started.
In Test: Completed tasks that are being tested for verification.
Done: tasks that have been completed and verified by testing.
You can add or remove lanes and columns to suit your needs, for example, you can add a column to highlight testing in the preproduction environment.
The goal is to move all the tasks to the Done column before the sprint is completed.
The difference between Kanban and Scrum is quite subtle. By most interpretations, scrum teams use a kanban board, just with scrum processes, artifacts, and roles along with it. There are, however, some key differences.
Scrum sprints have start and stop dates whereas kanban is an ongoing process.
A kanban board is used throughout the lifecycle of a project whereas a scrum board is cleared and recycled after each sprint.
A scrum board has a set number of tasks and a strict deadline to complete them.
Kanban boards are more flexible regarding tasks and timing. Tasks can be reprioritized, reassigned, or updated as needed.
Nowadays there are available several applications where you can have your digital board. They allow teams that do not share physical office space to use kanban or scrum boards remotely and asynchronously.
One of this software is Trello. The setup involves just a few clicks to create digital lists, which represent the stages of your process, on a board view that your whole team can access and manage. The following article can give you more information.
Via:
First Image by airfocus on Unsplash
Second image by https://www.atlassian.com/agile/kanban/boards