Is Kanban Always a "Pull" System?
The pushmi-pullyu (pronounced “push me-pull you”) is a fictional creature in “ The Story of Doctor Dolittle ,” which is described as a cross between a gazelle and a unicorn.
Recently, I was talking with a fellow software professional about some issues he was having implementing Kanban, and the pushmi-pullyu came to mind. Allow me to explain why.
Kanban’s Popularity
Kanban is the most popular agile approach after Scrum, according to the most recently published State of Agile Survey. Scrum is, of course, massively dominant.
Only 5 percent of respondents described their teams as Kanban teams, while three-quarters used either Scrum, a Scrum hybrid or Scrumban. However, when asked what techniques they used, nearly four in every 10 teams said that they use Kanban boards.
This is might be an exaggerated figure since, in my experience, many people confuse Kanban boards with Scrum boards. They look similar, but have very different purposes.
While a Kanban board maps a value stream for the lifetime of the product, a Scrum board is a visualization of a sprint backlog, and is reset at the beginning of every new sprint.
Additionally, the Scrum board is owned by a single Scrum development team, while Kanban is agnostic about who owns the board. These differences turned out to be at the heart of the issue that my colleague raised with me.
Read more at https://www.frontrowagile.com/blog/posts/94-is-kanban-always-a-pull-system
