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Scrum and Kanban are two flavours of Agile software development - two deceptively simple but surprisingly powerful approaches to software development. So how do they relate to each other? The purpose of this book is to clear up the fog, so you can figure out how Kanban and Scrum might be useful in your environment.

Part I illustrates the similarities and differences between Kanban and Scrum, comparing for understanding, not for judgement. There is no such thing as a good or bad tool – just good or bad decisions about when and how to use which tool. Part II is a case study illustrating how a Scrum-based development organization implemented Kanban in their operations and support teams.

Consistent with the style of “Scrum and XP from the Trenches”, this book strikes a conversational tone and is bursting with practical examples and pictures.

Henrik Kniberg and Mattias Skarin

http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/kanban-scrum-minibook

Recently I’ve been seeing lots more about Kanban development in discussion groups, articles, and at conferences. The surprising thing for me is that many smart Agile people — people I know to be intelligent insightful people seem bugged by Kanban — seem to see it as threat to Agile thinking. Others see it as using new trendy words to describe best practices we already understand. Basically, I keep running into a lot of grumpy agilistas and a few Kanban fanatics. And, the reason I think this is weird, is that I’m seeing Agile people behave as strangely about Kanban as traditional process folks behaved about Agile. They seem threatened. They see Kanban as a fad.

For me I find great value in Lean and Kanban thinking. I do use Kanban ideas in all the Agile teams I coach. And, I do use strict Kanban, WIP limits and all, with a couple teams. No one’s been hurt by it yet. And if it was the rebranding of already known best practice, possibly I was too dense to get it before hearing it clearly described in the Kanban metaphor.

Jeff Patton

http://www.agileproductdesign.com/blog/2009/kanban_over_simplified.html