What it keeps from each
| From scrum | From kanban | |
|---|---|---|
| Planning | Regular planning together | Planning when the queue runs low, not on a fixed date |
| Limits | WIP limits on each column | |
| Flow | Pull the next card when there's room | |
| Reflection | Regular retrospectives | Watching cycle time and where cards wait |
| Roles | Often dropped or kept loosely | Keep the roles you have |
What usually goes: fixed-length sprints, sprint commitments and estimating everything in detail.
When scrumban fits
- Scrum teams with a lot of unplanned work, such as bugs and support, where a 2-week plan rarely survives the first week.
- Maintenance and platform teams whose work arrives steadily rather than in features.
- Teams moving from scrum to kanban who want to keep the planning and retrospective habits.
- Teams that find scrum's meetings too heavy but want more structure than a plain board.
If your sprints usually finish what they planned, scrum may already be working. If you're not sure about either, read kanban vs scrum first.
How to run it
- Keep a board with a Ready column. Backlog, Ready, In Progress, In Review and Done is a common layout. Ready holds the next few cards, ordered and clear enough to start.
- Put WIP limits on In Progress and In Review. When they're full, finish before starting.
- Plan on demand. Set a trigger, such as fewer than 5 cards in Ready, and hold a short planning session when it's hit, instead of at a fixed date.
- Pull, don't assign. Whoever has room takes the top card from Ready.
- Keep a regular retrospective, every 2 weeks for example, to look at what's slowing cards down.
- Keep a daily standup at the board, walking it from right to left.
Mistakes to avoid
- Dropping planning altogether. Without the trigger, Ready runs dry and people pick whatever's nearest.
- WIP limits nobody keeps. A limit that's always exceeded is just a number on the board.
- Keeping every scrum meeting and adding kanban on top. That's more process, not a mix.
- Skipping the retrospective. Without it, the process stops improving, which is the point of both methods.
Setting it up in craaft
Start from the sprint planning template, which has Backlog, To Do, In Progress, In Review and Done. Rename To Do to Ready, then put WIP limits on In Progress and In Review. Any column can take one.
Write your planning trigger and other rules in the board brief, so people and agents follow the same ones. Use milestones for retrospectives or release dates, and standup mode (press U) for the daily check.
Questions
What is scrumban?
A mix of scrum and kanban. It usually keeps scrum's regular planning and retrospectives, and replaces fixed sprints with kanban's WIP limits and continuous flow.
Who created scrumban?
Corey Ladas described it in the late 2000s, as a way for scrum teams to move towards kanban. The name has since come to mean any practical mix of the two.
Does scrumban have sprints?
Usually not fixed ones. Planning happens when the Ready column runs low. Some teams keep a regular cycle for reviews and retrospectives without committing to a sprint's worth of work.
Is scrumban better than scrum?
It depends on the work. Scrumban suits teams with a lot of unplanned work. Scrum suits teams that can plan a few weeks ahead and benefit from a fixed rhythm.