Business Application Development

I read an interesting article in Agile Journal today titled "What is Best, Scrum or Kanban?" To a business application development specialist working with many application development teams, this is an interesting question. If you are in the same boat as I, maybe you already have a preference. Perhaps the article may sway your opinion.

If you are not familiar with one or both of these application development methodologies then the article will be very good reading for you. In a nutshell, both of these methodologies are used in the Agile application development style, as opposed to the SDLC or waterfall application development style.

In Scrum the project team decides on what deliverables it can deliver within one iteration of time. The team decides how long this time iteration is, usually two to three weeks. So Scrum focuses on splitting large tasks into its smallest pieces and delivering pieces of the project very quickly. This style tends to put the project team in sprint mode all the time.

Whereas, Kanban focuses more on steady workflow. The project team decides on the limit on the amount of work it is capable of accomplishing and sets up the workflow of tasks to ensure that the end result is accomplished. The article gives example of a Kanban chart and describes the similarities and differences of the two methodologies.

After reading the article and through my own experience, I would ask do these two application development methodologies have to be mutually exclusive. Can these two methods work in conjunction with each other within a project? Perhaps at the same time, or that you start with Scrum and move to something more along the lines of Kanban. Take this to the broader picture, do Agile and SDLC project methodologies have to be mutually exclusive? Can’t Scrum and time iterations be used within the SDLC project life cycle? What do you think?