After experiencing firsthand the short comings of Scrum at one of my client sites (lets just say the Agile Transformation Group was trying telling their ScrumMasters to have the team predict the number of live defects so they could do their Sprint Planning), reading articles from the likes of David Anderson, Peter Middleton, and James Sutton, and taking training on the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) by Dean Leffingwell, I am convinced that Kanban (or as some call it in the software industry – Scrumban) will start to get a lot of traction in the industry.
I didn’t get a chance to attend the Lean Systems Thinking conference in Boulder, Colorado. In some ways I think I was lucky given the historical flooding that happened that week. However, I met up with a good friend who did attend and yes, he did get stuck for several days before coming back to the Valley. Listening to his debrief from the conference, it was clear that there is a demand for Kanban tools, training, and consulting services. With companies like VersionOne, Rally, and Atlassian investing money and resources to adapt their tools to Kanban and SAFe – It is a sign that they believe it’s going to be a big part of the Agile industry.
So, here is my take to why Kanban will thrive in years to come – summed up in 5 points:
1. Production and Live Support – you cannot plan for work that is not known like live defects.
2. DevOps – need I say more.
3. Roadmaps – we all know that roadmaps can span years and doesn’t mean anything until those roadmap items (epics) are fleshed out.
4. Organizations that cannot fully adapt Scrum but want to be Agile – Scrumban.
5. Eliminating waste via visualizing your value stream on a custom Kanban board.
On that note, remember Agile doesn’t always mean Scrum, it can mean eXtreme programming, Kanban, SAFe, and other methodologies and frameworks. If you not already thinking outside Scrum, you probably will in the near future as you look to continue your journey in Agile enlightenment:)
