Kanban Misconception: Kanban is Just Scrum Without Iterations
Jenny Stuart
Construx VP of Consulting
There is some truth here, in that Kanban doesn’t have iterations. Kanban is a flow-based system. Work starts when there is availability to begin it.
Kanban’s greatest strength is that it models anything and is very flexible. To adopt Kanban, teams should:
- Understand and model the current workflow
- Define exit criteria by workflow stage
- Set WIP limits
- Identify any necessary classes of service
Because Kanban helps you understand the work a team does and the workflow, if you apply Kanban to a Scrum team, it would look very much like Scrum. A Kanban implementation in an organization that isn’t doing Scrum will look nothing like Scrum.
The following is a Kanban board for an onshore lead who managed an offshore team making small change requests for an internal system:
Kanban allows you to gain a deep understanding of your work and seek to optimize it to deliver value to the end users quickly.