Kanban and Scrum - making the most of both (Enterprise Software Development) Paperback – December 21, 2009

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.

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.

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.

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.

This book is great! It gives Agile an Operations spin.

Great little book for how to use Kanban in your personal or professional life. Much like Kanban there is not a lot of detail and the reader will need to interpret for themselves what to use and where. I did enjoy the graphics.

Great comparison of scrum vs. Kanban. The case study at the end is quite informative too. The author knows his stuff and relays the info well.

"Very simple and nice, more useful if you already have and understanding /experience of both Kanban and Scrum.Maybe too expensive for the content, almost all the pages are printed on just one side so do not expect much more than a good article.I would rank it 6/10 so not that great book actually.