Scrumban

What is Scrumban?

Scrumban is a mixture of Scrum and Kanban. For a more in-depth look at Scrumban, please read this post written by the creator of the Scrumban Method, Corey Ladas.

From the post introduction:

As more people become interested in Lean ideas and their application to knowledge work and project management, it’s helpful to find ways that make it easier to get started or learn a few basic concepts that can lead to deeper insights later. For those that are curious about kanban in an office context, it’s not unusual to find people who are either currently using Scrum, or have some understanding of Scrum as representative of Agile thinking. One way or another, Scrum users are an important constituent of the Kanban audience. Since Scrum can be described as a statement in the language we use to describe kanban systems, it is also fairly easy to elaborate on that case in order to describe Scrum/Kanban hybrids. This can be useful for existing Scrum teams who are looking to improve their scale or capability. It can also be useful for more cautious new users who find comfort in an “established” method. (Despite the fact that the kanban idea is at least 40 years older.)

The idea of using a simple task board with index cards or sticky notes is as old as Agile itself. Consider an example of such a task board with a simple Pending → In Process → Complete workflow. The cards on the board represent work items that are in the current scope of work. Names can be associated with the cards to indicate who is working on what. Agile teams have been using this sort of method for a long time, and a few people pointed out early on that this had some resemblance to the notion of kanban in Lean systems.