My team is currently using Scrum for our maintenance and support project, but the two-week sprints are constantly being disrupted by emergency production bugs. I feel like we can't plan properly. Would switching to a Kanban flow-based model be better for handling these unpredictable, high-priority tickets? How do we handle "urgent" items without ruining the existing workflow?
3 answers
For support environments, Kanban is almost always superior to Scrum because it lacks the rigid time-boxing of sprints. In Scrum, an emergency bug "breaks" the sprint commitment, which is demoralizing. In Kanban, you can use "Swimlanes." Create an "Expedite" lane at the top of your board for critical production issues. When a card enters that lane, the team drops everything to fix it. Since there are no sprint goals to fail, the team stays focused on the flow of value. This transition usually results in much higher stakeholder satisfaction for maintenance-heavy teams.
Do you think your stakeholders would be okay with losing the "predictability" of a sprint demo if you move to a continuous delivery model like Kanban?
Kanban is perfect for this. It allows for "Just-In-Time" planning, which is essential when your priorities change every few hours based on server stability or client needs.
Exactly, Linda. The flexibility of JIT planning is why most DevOps and SRE teams prefer Kanban over any other agile framework for their daily operations.
Actually, Thomas, you don't have to lose the demo! Many teams running Kanban still hold a bi-weekly cadence for demos and retrospectives. The difference is just that the work isn't tied to a fixed-scope commitment. You just demo whatever reached the "Done" column in that period. It provides the same visibility without the stress of "completing" a sprint.