The short answer
Choose scrum when the work can be planned a few weeks ahead and the team benefits from a regular rhythm of planning, review and reflection. Product teams building features often fit this.
Choose kanban when work arrives unpredictably and has to be picked up as it comes: support, operations, maintenance, content, or any team whose priorities change daily.
If you're unsure, start with a kanban board and a WIP limit. It asks the least of you on day 1, and you can add a scrum rhythm later if you miss it.
Side by side
| Scrum | Kanban | |
|---|---|---|
| Cadence | Fixed sprints of 1 month or less, usually 1 or 2 weeks | Continuous. Work starts when there's room |
| Roles | Product owner, scrum master and developers | None required. Keep the roles you have |
| Meetings | Sprint planning, a 15-minute daily scrum, sprint review and retrospective | None required. Most teams keep a daily standup and a regular review |
| Limits work by | What fits in the sprint | A WIP limit on each column |
| Changing plans | The sprint's goal holds until the sprint ends | The next card can change at any time |
| Measures | Work finished per sprint | Cycle time, throughput and work in progress |
| The board | Usually reset each sprint | Runs on, card after card |
How scrum works
Scrum is defined by the Scrum Guide, a short document by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. Work happens in sprints, fixed stretches of 1 month or less. Each sprint opens with sprint planning, where the team picks a goal and the work to reach it, and closes with a review of what was built and a retrospective on how the team worked.
3 roles share the work: the product owner orders the backlog, the developers build, and the scrum master helps the team keep to the method and removes what slows it down. A 15-minute daily scrum keeps everyone in step.
The strength of scrum is rhythm. Every few weeks there's a natural point to stop, show what's done and change direction. The cost is ceremony: 4 kinds of meeting, and a plan that resists change mid-sprint.
How kanban works
Kanban comes from the card systems Toyota used to control production, adapted for knowledge work. It has fewer rules. The Kanban Guide describes 3 practices:
- Make the work visible. A board with a column for each stage, and a card for each piece of work.
- Limit work in progress. A WIP limit caps how many cards a column can hold. When it's full, the team finishes something before starting something new.
- Watch the flow and improve it. Track how long cards take to cross the board, and change the process where they get stuck.
There are no sprints, so work starts as soon as there's room, and priorities can change between one card and the next. The strength of kanban is that it fits around how a team already works. The cost is that nothing forces a pause to look back, so teams have to make room for review themselves.
What they share
- Both make work visible, usually on a board.
- Both limit how much is started at once: scrum with the sprint, kanban with WIP limits.
- Both want work finished, not just started.
- Both expect the team to inspect how it works and improve it.
The real difference is when the team decides what to do next: once per sprint in scrum, or card by card in kanban.
Using both
Many teams mix them, and the mix has a name: scrumban. A common version keeps scrum's regular planning and retrospective, drops the fixed sprint, and adds kanban's WIP limits so work flows between planning sessions.
Another is scrum with a kanban board: sprints as usual, but with WIP limits on In Progress so the team finishes cards before starting new ones within the sprint.
Either way, on a board
Both methods run on a board, and craaft works for either:
- Kanban: the kanban board template starts with To Do, In Progress and Done. Add a WIP limit to In Progress and columns as your flow needs them.
- Scrum: the sprint planning template adds a Backlog and an In Review column. Write the sprint goal in the board brief and mark the sprint's end with a milestone.
Standup mode (press U) walks the board one person at a time, which suits a daily scrum and a kanban standup alike.
Questions
Is kanban agile?
Yes. Kanban fits the agile values of delivering in small pieces and adapting to change, though it comes from lean manufacturing rather than the Agile Manifesto. Scrum is the most widely used agile framework, and kanban is often used alongside it.
Can you use kanban and scrum together?
Yes. Mixing them is common enough to have a name, scrumban. A typical version keeps regular planning and retrospectives but replaces fixed sprints with WIP limits and continuous flow.
Which is better for small teams?
Kanban usually asks less of a small team, because it needs no roles or set meetings. Scrum suits a small team that wants a regular rhythm of planning and review.
What's the difference between a scrum board and a kanban board?
A scrum board holds one sprint's work and is usually cleared at the end of the sprint. A kanban board runs on continuously, with WIP limits on its columns. The columns themselves often look the same.
Does kanban have sprints?
No. Work flows continuously, and a new card starts when a column has room under its WIP limit. Teams that want a regular rhythm often add a weekly or fortnightly review.