Agile methods versus project types
Kanban fitment: The most commonly cited instance where Kanban is extremely successful is a software maintenance project which involves fixing production bugs and doing small incremental improvements. Kanban works well with software maintenance because such work isn’t a natural fit for projects and one to four week sprints.
Kanban is also good fit and successfully used by Shared service teams like production team, Test team, etc. Kanban extensively used non-software teams as well like: HR teams, vehicle service teams, etc.
Scrum fitment: Scrum is popular agile methodology, mostly applied and great fit for new development / Greenfield projects and major product enhancement projects.
Seen team force fitting Scrum for maintenance activities, note its not good practice to apply Scrum for maintenance / support projects.
Scrumban fitment: Since Scrumban methodology features the best of Scrum and Kanban, the situations in which it can be used are many and varied. It can and should of course be tailored to suit own particular requirements. Below is suggestive fitment where Scrumban will work well:
- Maintenance Project’s / Production Support Project’s
- Same team handling three or more different product change activities like development, maintenance, production, etc.
- Development Project’s.
Note: Above mentioned methodology guidance is provided based on experiences from across organizations. A team can adopt different variants but need to ensure team does not ignore core essence of agility (being v/s doing).
