Kanban vs Scrum: What Is the Difference?

The short answer

Scrum organises work into fixed-length sprints of one month or less, with set roles and meetings. Kanban has no sprints: work flows continuously across a board, and limits on work in progress stop the team from starting more than it can finish. Scrum suits teams that ship in planned steps; kanban suits teams whose work arrives all the time, such as support, operations or content.

How scrum works

• Sprints: a fixed period, one month or less, in which the team finishes an agreed set of work.
• Roles: a Product Owner who orders the backlog, a Scrum Master who helps the team work well, and the Developers who do the work.
• Events: Sprint Planning, a short Daily Scrum, a Sprint Review and a Sprint Retrospective.
• Artifacts: the Product Backlog, the Sprint Backlog and the finished Increment.

Once a sprint starts, its goal stays fixed, so most new requests wait for the next sprint.

How kanban works

• A board shows each stage of the work as a column, from To do to Done.
• Columns can have a work-in-progress (WIP) limit: a cap on how many cards they hold at once.
• New work starts whenever there is room under the limit, so there are no sprints.
• Kanban needs no new roles or meetings; teams keep the ones they have.
• Teams improve by watching the flow: how long a card takes from start to finish (cycle time) and how many cards are finished each week (throughput).

Kanban vs scrum side by side

• Rhythm: scrum works in fixed sprints; kanban is continuous.
• Roles: scrum has a Product Owner, a Scrum Master and Developers; kanban requires none.
• Changes along the way: scrum protects the sprint goal; kanban takes new work whenever there is capacity.
• Limits: scrum limits work to what fits in a sprint; kanban limits it with WIP limits per column.
• Measures: scrum teams track velocity per sprint; kanban teams track cycle time and throughput.
• The board: a scrum board is reset every sprint; a kanban board keeps running.

Which one should your team use?

Choose scrum when the work can be planned a few weeks ahead, the team ships in increments and people outside the team want a regular review, as in many product and software teams. Choose kanban when work arrives unpredictably, priorities change often or the team handles many small tasks, as in support, marketing, operations and most student groups. If you are unsure, start with kanban: it asks for the fewest changes to how you already work.

Scrumban: using both

Many teams mix the two. They plan and review on a regular rhythm like scrum, but run the work on a kanban board with WIP limits. This is called scrumban, and it suits teams that want a regular rhythm without fixing every task in advance. Read what scrumban is and how to set it up.

How to run either one in Glidely

For kanban, start a free kanban board, give the In progress list a card limit and move cards as the work moves. For scrum, start from the Sprint board template (Sprint backlog, In progress, Code review, Testing, Done), add story-point estimates to the cards and switch to Timeline or Calendar to see the sprint. New to boards? Read what a kanban board is.

Frequently asked questions