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Agile Methodologioes

Agile Methodologies: Scrum and Kanban

Agile is the philosophy. Scrum and Kanban are two popular ways to implement it.

Scrum (time-boxed approach)

  • Sprints: Short, fixed-length cycles (1–3 weeks).

  • Roles:

    • Product Owner (sets priorities)
    • Scrum Master (facilitates, removes blockers)
    • Development Team (does the work)

  • Events: Sprint Planning, Daily Stand-ups, Sprint Review, Retrospective.

  • Artifacts: Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, Increment.

Scrum Example

A team promises: “In 2 weeks, we’ll deliver a baseline VM image.”
- They sync daily for 15 min.
- At sprint end, they demo the VM and get feedback: “please add curl and htop.”
- Next sprint, they adjust accordingly.

Kanban (flow-based approach)

  • Visualize work on a board (To Do → In Progress → Done).
  • Limit Work-In-Progress (WIP) to avoid multitasking chaos.
  • Measure flow: cycle time (start to finish), throughput (items/week).

Kanban Example

An ops team gets requests: create users, patch servers, rotate keys.

  • They allow only 3 tasks max “In Progress”.
  • When one finishes, they pull the next.
    → Result: fewer half-done tasks, faster average completion.

Scrum vs Kanban (at a glance)

Scrum Kanban
Works in fixed sprints Works in continuous flow
Team commits to a sprint goal Team pulls tasks as capacity frees
Best for project-style work Best for ongoing ops/support

Agile Cycle