#BADay2022 - Scrum, Kanban or a Mix of Both? A Review and Suggestion for Practitioners (N. Ozkan)

Among the Agile methods, Scrum and Kanban are common in software development and they are considered the two most powerful ones influencing the direct results of projects. But they are mostly used in an exclusive way especially by their gurus. Apparently, there is method war within agile methods at the guru’s side. This is not a good case for the implementers who want to get most benefits from the methods. To get implications from the practitioners side, this talk firstly provides practice based case studies and experience reports by investigating 38 empiric-based academic studies from the practice which involve Scrum and Kanban together by comparing to know their relative strengths and advantages and/or integrating them. This first part poses primary information on advantages of each method over another one, the properties including artifacts, roles, and events from Scrum and Kanban in combining them in a hybrid way, the properties of transitions from one to another such as transition directions (from Scrum to Kanban, Kanban to Scrum or Scrum/Kanban to Hybrid), transition years, and transition reasons. The outputs can be interesting for the industry. For example, nearly all of the transitioning organizations are moving from Scrum to Kanban or to a hybrid method. Among the reasons for the transitions, the problems experienced with Scrum are remarkable. In comparison, Kanban stands out clearly in a positive way. Almost all of the teams combining the both use flow instead of sprint. And, much more output as such is provided.

Based on the first part, secondly, I will provide multiple models to get benefits from the both Scrum and Kanban and to select one or more model based on the context and needs of organizations. In integrating the elements from each method, I will aim to combine a set of elements by using a decision-tree-like structure. The suggested multiple models are also evaluated by practitioners. At the end, the outputs that will be provided by this talk aims to fill a considerable gap in the sector resulting from "OR thinking about the Agile methods" and is practice relevant to come up with a more moderated solution.