Kanban and Scrum - making the most of both (Enterprise Software Development)

Kanban and Scrum is a similar small and useful book as Henrik's earlier popular book  Scrum and XP from the Trenches (Enterprise Software Development) . Kanban and Scrum briefly compares Scrum and Kanban to explain the differences and give hints in which situation one is perhaps better than the other. Just like Henrik's earlier book, this is a very thin and easy to read book."Kanban and Scrum" is about 100 pages and consists of 2 parts, each written by one of the two authors. The first part is the "Kanban and Scrum" part, written by Henrik, where he shortly clarifies Scrum and Kanban and explains the differences between them. He gives hints to in which situation Kanban and which situation Scrum might be better... and also hints about ways of combining them into Scrumban (a term Henrik doesn't use, but was popularized by one of the first descriptions of Kanban by Corey Ladas  Scrumban - Essays on Kanban Systems for Lean Software Development ).The second part of this book is an experience report written by Mattias Skarin about applying Kanban for an operations team in a games company. He briefly explains how they got started and how gradually they evolved Kanban and the kind of decisions they had to make.This book is very thin and reads fast (of the 100 pages, there are a lot of empty pages). Most of it is available for free from Henrik's page, so if you don't want to buy the book, you can just download it :) The writing is easy to read, it reads more like a blog post than a book.Amazon stars-wise, I've been thinking about 3 or 4 stars. 3 stars because the book is thin, not very thorough and it does what it is supposed to do well, but not much more. It doesn't give a thorough introduction of Kanban (for that, probably check David Andersons work:  Kanban ) it doesn't give a thorough introduction of Scrum either. It just briefly explains the difference. Four stars because Henriks writing is very popular (a little too popular for me) but it attracts a wide audience. Also, his writing is very clear, he has a good ability to explain seemingly complex concepts in a simple way. Yet, this book is not a ground-shaking new book. In the end, I decided to favor Henriks explanation skills and go for 4 stars. If you know about Scrum and heard about Kanban and... wonder... then this is the book for you! If you want to have a thorough explanation of Kanban or Scrum, skip this book and go for the ones mentioned in this review.

I had thought the book would be a balanced tutorial to help you "make the most of both", but it was more about the merits of Kanban . I rate it high for the educational value nevertheless.

An informal but illustrative introduction to the differences between Kanban and Scrum. The authors assume that you are already familiar with the Scrum methodology and focus on motivating the differences in the implementation and philosophy of each. In other words, don't expect a thorough technical analysis of either, and definitely pick up some other resource if you are not already familiar with Scrum.As the authors put it in the opening.. "it's not the tool you start with, but the way you constantly improve your use of that tool and expand your toolset over time". In other words, Scrum, or any other methodology should not be treated as a dogma. Great teams review, adjust, and experiment with their process to discover what works for them and their environment. Scrum provides a set of guidelines, and Kanban relaxes some of them, giving you more wiggle room (which can be both a blessing and a curse) to explore: how you estimate, how you prioritize, which criteria you optimize (lead time vs troughput vs ...), whether you hold daily standups, and so on.The book is a quick read and provides a good mix of hands-on examples and practical advice. The reassuring part was that our team has already arrived at many of the same conclusions and patterns on our own, and this just gave us the confidence to go even further and experiment with our workflow to a larger extent.

This is a very interesting and easy to read book.When I sit on the couch and open it casually, I can't stop.This book gives you a clear understanding of the differences between Scrum and Kanban, and the combination of both.

I have read better books on these subjects

This was a requesteda birthday gift. Never heard of any complaints, but probably would not. Glad to get it thru the internet. Saved me time to hunt it down in the bookstores.

Very concise guide on the subject. I especially enjoyed the the case study at the end. It discussed how an operational team tackled Kanban to fit their process. It has been an eye opening experience in our organisation.

Quick short topics serve as a good review. Have heard that the content is available on the web, but the handhold version is great to keep in the office as a reference.

Pretty good, each chapter is nice and short. I can't help but feel though that the whole booklet isn't really just a series of short blog posts comparing the different aspects of each approach. Part one, written by Kniberg, is certainly the better half of the booklet. Use it if you need a quick intro to Kanban vs Scrum that you can share with a new team, otherwise you could probably pick up 95% of the content on blogs. People already even moderately versed in Kanban won't find anything new here however.

I bought this for reference purposes after reading the on-line version.The on-line version included some nice color illustrations, but the book is black and white so these were not so clear which was disappointing.

Everyrhing Fine

Chiaro e semplice, soprattutto coloro che hanno gia' una infarinatura di SCRUM & KANBAN apprezzeranno gli spunti pratici che il libro offre.Il libro e' molto breve e le pagine stampate su un solo lato con caratteri grandi, forse un buon articolo su una rivista avrebbe fatto lo stesso servizio, come "libro" e' un po costoso da questo punto di vista.

I can only recomment this easy to read Book.