What are the pros and cons of switching from Scrum to Kanban for a maintenance-heavy team?

All answers to this question.

We made the move to "Scrumban" last year. We kept the Daily Standup and Retrospectives from Scrum but eliminated the Sprint Planning and fixed timeboxes. For a maintenance-heavy team, the "Pull System" of Kanban is far superior. It allows you to visualize bottlenecks in real-time. The biggest risk is losing the sense of urgency that a Sprint deadline provides. To counter this, we set strict Work In Progress (WIP) limits. If the "Testing" column is full, no one can pull a new "Development" task. This forced us to finish work before starting new things, which actually increased our monthly throughput by 25%.

   Answered 2024-01-15 by Kimberly Robinson

How did your Product Owner react to the lack of a "Sprint Commitment"? Did they feel like they lost control over the roadmap?

   Answered 2024-01-18 by Matthew Davis

• Matthew, it was a challenge initially. We had to show the PO the "Cumulative Flow Diagram." Once they saw that work was moving through the system faster and with less "wait time" than in Scrum, they became our biggest supporters. We now do "just-in-time" replenishment sessions instead of heavy bi-weekly planning.

     Commented 2024-01-21 by David Thompson

Kanban is great for flow, but make sure you don't skip the Retrospectives. Without them, the process never improves and you just end up with a messy To-Do list.

   Answered 2024-01-25 by Nancy Allen

• Spot on, Nancy. Continuous improvement is the "Kaizen" spirit of Kanban. Without Retrospectives, you’re just doing "Waterfall in a board."

     Commented 2024-01-28 by Christopher Hall