Last year, Stormpath made the big shift from Scrum to Kanban. While we love Agile principles, the Scrum process wasn’t working for us. Kanban made our team more efficient, happier, and increased our focus on quality software. More importantly, it has become a core part of our company culture, and is now used by non-technical teams like Marketing and HR. Kanban software development focuses on continuous delivery and drives high efficiency by limiting how much work can be done at once. Invented by Toyota and modified by David J. Anderson for software development, Kanban can have a huge impact on modern teams delivering cloud software in continuous environments.

1. So Long Scrum, Hello Kanban
Alex Salazar, @SalaTzar
Founder & CEO, Stormpath

2. About Stormpath
• User Management API for Developers
• Registration and Login
• User Profiles
• Role Based Access Control (RBAC)
• Permissions
• Password Security

3. SCRUM, IT’S NOT YOU, IT’S ME

4. About Agile Scrum
• Most popular Agile process
• Drives efficiency thru timeboxing (Sprints)
• Sprint Planning defines features
• Daily 10-minute Stand-ups
• Sprint Retrospective meetings to fix
inefficiencies
• Well-defined and rigid process
Learn more at Stormpath.com

5. High Overhead of Sprint Planning
• Half day event for entire team
• Hours of prep for product team
• Long debates on priority/scope
• Engineers sitting through unrelated issues
Learn more at Stormpath.com

6. Good Estimates are a Myth
• Sprint planning relies heavily on good estimates
• 100% of us are bad estimators
• Effort divining estimates felt wasted
• Work needs to get done regardless
Learn more at Stormpath.com

7. Bad Estimates Break Sprints
• Bad estimates throw off Sprint Plans
• Bigger-than-expected items overload Sprint
• More meetings to fix Sprint and “commitment”
• “Gaming” feature scope to fit into Sprint
Learn more at Stormpath.com

8. Change Management Sucks
• Sprint planning locks in feature set
• Changes to priorities and scope are hard
• Even if work on a feature hasn’t begun
• Changes = more freaking meetings!
Learn more at Stormpath.com

9. Morale Suffered
• Bad estimates led to unrealistic expectations
• Team missed sprint commitments
• Retrospective meetings turn into finger-pointing
• Biz felt Eng missed their targets
• Eng felt Biz kept moving the ball
Learn more at Stormpath.com

10. Spikey Productivity Drove Burnout
Learn more at Stormpath.com

11. Learn more at Stormpath.com
ENTER KANBAN

12. About Kanban
• Pioneered by Toyota manufacturing
• Modified by David Anderson for software dev
• Simple and flexible
• Growing software community support
Learn more at Stormpath.com

13. What is Kanban?
• Continuous flow process
Issues are “pulled” through steps
• Often visualized as a board
Columns are steps in the process
Rows/Swimlanes can show priority
• Workers “pull” work right to left on board.
Learn more at Stormpath.com

14. Efficiency through WIP Limits
• WIP: Work-in-Progress
• Forced limit on concurrent work capacity
• Time estimates no longer part of process
• Cycle Time measures velocity at item-level
• Work furthest along is highest priority
• “Stop multi-tasking and context shifting”
Learn more at Stormpath.com

15. Sample Kanban Board
Learn more at Stormpath.com

16. Sane Change Management
• Biz owns “To Do” column
Means engineering work has not started
Change “To Do” items as much as you want
• Eng owns the rest of the board
Once item leaves to “To Do” it means engineering work
has already started
Hard to change items outside of “To Do” column
• Engineers insulated from business changes
Learn more at Stormpath.com

17. Kanban = Happy Team
• Flexible & Process-Driven
• Kanban owned by team, not management
Sense of ownership and pride across team
• Smooth transition from Scrum (2 days)
Learn more at Stormpath.com

18. Productivity Went Up
• Swap Deadlines for Velocity pressure
• Fewer meetings, more doing
• Reduced multi-tasking and context shifting
• Self-documenting process (thanks to Board)
Learn more at Stormpath.com

19. Structural Focus on Quality
• No deadlines = less temptation to cut corners
• Less tech debt
• No skipped code reviews
• 95% code coverage
• Code quality baked into process
• Team fights to ensure quality in their process
Learn more at Stormpath.com

20. Near Zero Overhead
• Sprint Planning? Gone.
• Project Management? Minimal.
• Estimation Poker? None.
• Short Stand-ups
• Engineering spends their time doing
Learn more at Stormpath.com

21. Kaizen vs Retrospectives
• Kaizen: Continuous Improvement
• Forward Looking
Less critiquing
Focused on process improvement
No “right” way, just new ideas to try
• More Collaboration
Ideas are experiments to be tested
Upbeat, creative feel
Learn more at Stormpath.com

22. Kanban Isn’t Perfect
• Nascent Tools
Atlassian Jira and Greenhopper
Lack of customization
• Urgency is Abstract
Less pressure to move fast (no deadlines)
Sense of urgency comes from culture
Learn more at Stormpath.com

23. Keep Calm and Kanban
• Efficiency through WIP Limits
• Not right for everyone
• Helped Stormpath
Happy team
Less Overhead
Higher productivity and quality
WIN!
Learn more at Stormpath.com

24. Resources
• Read the full article on our blog:
http://www.stormpath.com/blog/so-long-scrum-hello-kanban
• Agile Chalk Talk: Kanban and Scrum
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx6_E5XxqEo
• Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your
Technology Business
http://www.amazon.com/Kanban-Successful-Evolutionary-
Technology-Business/dp/0984521402
• Atlassian’s “Do Agile Right”:
https://www.atlassian.com/agile/kanban
• What is Kanban?
http://www.kanbanblog.com/explained/

25. About Stormpath
• User Management API for Developers
• Registration and Login
• User Profiles
• Role Based Access Control (RBAC)
• Permissions
• Password Security

26. Follow Us on Twitter
@SalaTzar @goStormpath
Learn more at Stormpath.com