The Most Major Agile Life Cycles: Scrum, Kanban, and Lean
They are Scrum, Kanban, and Lean. They are the most significant among all agile project management frameworks, each framework with principles, roles, and processes to be adapted to some parties. Here are summarized extracts for each of them:
1. Scrum: Hang out with Key Terms and Concepts:
- Sprint: The suggestion that Scrum makes is to break up the whole project into sprints. A sprint is a fixed period of 2-4 weeks and it has to have an increment at the end of it that is potentially ship-ready.
- Scrum Team: The scrum team is made up of the product owner, scrum master, and development team coming together to deliver the product.
- Product Backlog: It: Prioritized long list of flavors and user stories completed and done so and from that will be managed by the product owner.
- Daily Scrum: A concise daily meeting wherein team reports and effects occurrences are all told.
- Sprint Review: This is the meeting in which every increment for the sprint is examined and assessed in front of all the stakeholders and the team.
- Sprint retrospective: The level of increment that is determined by the product owner is superficialized together with the team of developers to identify areas that could be improved.
A real-life example of Scrum in Action: The newly developed mobile application software project has been using Scrum tenets in 2-week sprints, where the team is working on being able to log in to the application during the first sprint.
After the sprint, a sprint review is held for the team to demonstrate the feature to the product owner for feedback.
2. Body Kanban:
Key Concepts:
- Visual Board: Kanban uses a visual board with columns that represent distinct stages in which work has to proceed, such as To Do, Done, and In Progress. Each task is represented by a card or sticky note that moves through each stage.
- Work-in-Progress (WIP) Limits: Each column on the board has a WIP limit maximum limit of tasks that may be present in that stage. This eliminates bottlenecks and smooths workflow.
- Pull System: In Kanban, work is pulled from one stage to the next based on capacity freeing up for work-in-progress limits and their inclusion.
- Continuous flow: Continuous focus is about work flowing through, and no delay, and no interruptions.
Kanban in Action: A marketing team using Kanban must have a visual board that has task areas of content creation, design, and approval. An initial limit of three items in the WIP limit for the “Content Creation” column ensures that no new content is worked on until other tasks have been completed.
3. Lean
It is a summarizing innovation with key concepts of use:
- Value Stream Mapping: Mapping the entire process, such that value can be added or not be added, will help identify waste and eliminate it.
- Just-In-Time (JIT): For lean, the value is delivered exactly in time, to minimize stockpile,a nd works dare done waste. Usually limiting the work in progress follows.
- Kaizen (Continous Improvement)-lean process, teams regularly reflect on their processes and will make little, continuous changes for improvement.
- Respect for People: Lean respects and involves people doing the work because they have the best understanding of the process.
Lean example: In manufacturing, Lean principles are duly operationalized through improved flow in production for reducing excess inventory, minimizing defects, and giving excellence in the material flow. Also, workers are involved in improvement identification and execution.
Finding the Ideal Framework
Each Agile framework has its method with which one can use to manage projects. For example, in Scrum, it is good to capture projects that need structured iterations and roles defined. In this regard, Kanban is perfect because it focuses more on an ongoing workflow process. Lean methodology is particularly good when from the waste processes it can get improvements and continue to have a feedback mechanism for constant improvements.
Organizations tend to adopt frameworks that best suit project needs, team fit, and project goals. Some of those teams may borrow concepts from one or more frameworks to create a hybrid method that works for their very particular context.
