Scrum: Hm, you’re rather small. Are you sure you want to do this?
Kanban: Bring it.
Scrum: Right. I represent a fundamental mindshift in the way that people do projects.
Kanban: So do I. My mindshift is different to yours; it feels subtler.
Scrum: I doubt that. I help teams collaborate and deliver working software iteratively.
Kanban: As do I. Unlike you, I don’t tie people down to fixed iterations; I let them find their own cadence.
Scrum: You say that like it’s a good thing! What if people aren’t even used to delivering iteratively? How can you possibly stop novices from taking weeks over their increments of code?
Kanban: Well, maybe I don’t work so well with novice teams. A high-discipline team, though, who can keep their flow consistent, will find themselves more responsive with me than they will with you.
Scrum: I help new teams get started. I give them easy, simple approaches that they can follow. You’re all about the maths.
Kanban: Actually, I’m all about the theory of constraints. By limiting work in progress, I make the bottlenecks obvious.
Scrum: I do that by focusing on getting the work through to production. What’s more, I was designed for software. You’re just the bastard offspring of manufacturing; you have no relevance!
Kanban: If I have no relevance, then why do so many people believe that I’m valuable, and fight to defend me?
Scrum: They’re in it for the money…
Kanban: Says the world’s fastest-growing pyramid scheme…
Scrum: I resent that! There are plenty of successful Scrum projects out there. We’re good people; we just want to change the world.
Kanban: I’ll settle for continuous improvement, thanks.
Scrum: We’ve got that too, except we call them Retrospectives.
Kanban: You don’t need to batch up your improvements if everyone is focused on it.
Scrum: There’s nothing to prevent us from continually improving.
Kanban: There’s nothing to prevent us from having retrospectives, if we need them, or in fact from taking on any of your valuable practices. I’m just like you, except that I have sensible limits.
Scrum: You’re not just like me. You don’t even worry about estimates half the time.
Kanban: We estimate in time to deliver, not story points. The business understand this.
Scrum: The business don’t trust my teams; they haven’t delivered successfully for a while. My planning enables them to regain that trust. You can’t even work without it.
Kanban: That’s true. Once we have the trust, though, we don’t need to waste as much time on planning and estimating as you do.
Scrum: How can you call a practice that establishes trust wasteful?
Kanban: You’re right. We value people too, you know – we work well with the Lean principles, and “Respect for People” is one of the pillars.
Scrum: Well, that’s good to know. People are the most important part of the process.
Kanban: We seem to have quite a lot in common. Thinking about it, you’d probably make quite a good stepping-stone for people learning to deliver software iteratively for the first time. I guess they could turn to me later, once the discipline is there.
Scrum: That might work. I know some people have used you in odd ways, and found value. Maybe we should just be friends?
Kanban: Let’s call it a draw.
XP: Let’s not. You may have the planning and estimation sewn up; you may be shifting your constraints and delivering responsively. Neither of you can survive without my technical practices. Get over here!
FATALITY!
Winner: XP
A phrase frequently used in the Scrum teams I’ve been involved in – as well as a few of the XP teams – is “Pigs and Chickens”.
Googling the origin, I found out where it came from. Like many terms and practices in Agile Software Development, it’s surrounded by controversy.
I have come to love the phrase, mostly because it causes people who are unfamiliar with Agile and Scrum practices to ask, “What are pigs and chickens?”
When the Agile team members smile and happily explain the joke, the people asking the questions often remember that they have other questions they wanted to ask, too. Then they find out that most Agile teams are full of real human beings who love to talk about what they’re doing and share good practices. This in turn invites more conversation, which spreads the goodness.
That leads to requests like, “Liz, I’d love to see what the team are doing with <xyz>. Can I turn up at your meeting, please, just as a chicken?”
Anything which facilitates better communication – even by being an obscure hook that invites curiosity – has got to be good.
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