How we moved from Scrum to Kanban without disrupting team's ongoing work
An experience based Playbook
If you’re planning to move from Scrum to Kanban, then there must be a reason behind it. Watch the YouTube video below to learn about various situations in which it is advisable to make this move.
In our case, the warning came during the April 2014 Sprint Review. A member of the senior management asked, "Why are you guys doing Scrum when your work doesn't fit neatly into two-week boxes?"
I won’t exaggerate if I say that at that moment, everyone was thinking the same thing: “How can this chaos be shifted to Kanban?”
And at that moment, I realized why the senior executive had sent me the invitation to that particular meeting. I was expected to help the Scrum Master make that move.
I've helped many, if not hundreds, of teams transition between different Agile frameworks, and I can tell you this: moving from Scrum to Kanban can be a bit tricky.
Why?
Because it is usually expected to be done without disrupting the team's momentum.
Many teams stick with Scrum simply because "that's how we've always done it." But sometimes, your work tells you it's time for a change.
In this post, I'll share the steps we took to make this transition happen, which in our case took several weeks.
Let’s get started.
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Step #1: Upskilling the team
Before you can help your team shift boats, you must make sure that your team (and you) know how to ride the new boat.
You DO NOT need any certification in Kanban. However, if your senior management is pushing for this, then asking them to fund yours (and your team’s) certification is not a bad idea.
The Kanban Flow Manager certificate is MORE THAN ENOUGH for this purpose.
Again!
I am NOT endorsing any kind of certification here, but adding one to your resume, especially when your company can cover the cost, won’t hurt.
You can also check the following free resources:
Kanban Foundations Training Deck (to train your team)
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