The Kanban Board
The Scrum board as well as the Kanban board is used to show the progress of development work. Both boards are categorized as whiteboards in the “To Do-In Progress-Done” categories. The Kanban board is used to display the work process flow and limits the quantities of tasks that are in the in progress column. According to Lean concepts, the quantity of in progress tasks should be limited to where it is small enough to prevent wasteful tasks, but large enough to minimise the number of idle workers. In terms of WIP limits, the following applies:
- Scrum limits WIP per Sprint. The Scrum team can have unlimited items in the “In Progress” column.
- Kanban limits WIP per workflow status (Ready, Kick-Off, In Progress, Review, Accepted). A number in the “status” sections means that the maximum number of items cannot be greater than that number.
Kanban versus the Scrum Board
With a Scrum board, the entire team is responsible for each task. With the Kanban board, the team is not responsible, but each person has responsibility for their step on the task flow (development, testing, verifying, etc.). If a team member has completed their task, that person can choose what to do by either helping another team member with their taskings or take on another activity from the queue. A Scrum board is used by one Scrum team whereas the Kanban board is a workflow that is not required to be owned by a specific team. The Product Owner should not be able to make changes to a Scrum board because of the team’s commitment to complete a specific number of user stories.
The Scrum team members are the only parties that can make changes to the Scrum board. With Kanban, the Product Owner (or proxy such as Service Delivery Manager) can edit the Kanban board. The Scrum team must not add any additional items to the Scrum board during a Sprint. Work items are set in stone during Sprint Planning before iterations begin. Kanban has no established time frame for making updates to its board because it has limits on the quantity of in progress tasks. When tasks progress from work In-Progress to the Done column, the development team will have the additional capacity to progress with new work items. They can then move a new tasks into the In-Progress column.
Recommended Further Reading
The following materials may assist you in order to get the most out of this course: