Agile methodology nowadays, Scrum or Kanban, is completely different from what we were used to when was it was first presented to us.
We switched from Scrum to Kanban to some hybrid Agile Scrum/Kanban methodology that worked pretty well for us.
Scrum
We used to have 2/4 weeks sprints, with sprint retros and plannings/feature kick-offs.
In an attempt not to be forced to deliver big features in such a small timeframe (2/4 weeks) and also not to raise the team pressure/stress on plannings and commit to specific set of features, we decided to switch to Kanban.
Kanban
With Kanban, we discovered that blocked tasks will just pile up on our board, never being fixed (this will not happen with Scrum, cause you need to deliver the stories you’ve committed to).
Hybrid Scrum & Kanban
Then we went back to Scrum, but keeping the freedom to pick which stories/tasked we need to deliver to achieve a goal that we set ourselves every week:
1 week — Kanban style delivery:
- start of week team goal meeting
- end of the week demo to Product Owners, UX/UI Designers, other stakeholders and team members not involved with the actual development.
Software companies/teams are switching from Scrum to Kanban, and back, on a monthly/quarterly basis, trying to improve their current software development/release process.
Every new hire or new manager comes with a different approach that worked well for them in a previous team the’ve been part of. My suggestion is to listen to them, but change only if your current team’s process is not working, and if you try something new, try it on a time-boxed manner (2–4 weeks) and review how things went during those weeks.
While these transitions are natural for teams, sometimes it can be hard to adapt and change.
Overall it’s definitely worth it, since each team is different, and in our case, we can deliver more, with less pressure/stress and with more quality.
My suggestion is that, if the current Agile process is not working for you and your team, try to change/adapt to what your team wants, review in 2–4 weeks and improve. Learn from the things that went bad, keep the things that went good and always ask for feedback in retros and team meetings.
Written by Bogdan Vazzolla, part of LoadFocus team.
