3. Should Greg agree to move all remaining teams from scrum to kanban?

What metrics should he use to evaluate his decision?

Greg had previously moved the software development and quality assurance teams to Agile from the previous waterfall model. The results has been appreciated both by the sales teams and the customers. However the implementation has not been easy Software development team has made what can be called a successful transition from waterfall model to agile methodology Testing teams have shown tendency to adopt mini waterfall approach with end to end integration testing and Automation process still under Work in Progress The Content Development team still follows the waterfall approach, There has been resentment and confusion in the new roles and responsibilities that each employee now has.

The dilemma that Greg faces is to move all the remaining teams from Scrum to Kanban Kanban Process: Kanban process is based on a basic methodology of limiting the inventory or work in progress and a new phase of development is started only on completion of the previous unit work. Thus Kanban doesnt include any major changes brings minor changes to an SDLC. The teams that follow Kanban start with whatever they are currently doing. The current process are understood by mapping them to the overall value chain and then setting up work in progress limits for each stage. Kanban primarily is based on Pull and thus affects the prioritization of work which would follow the existing work. The prioritization meets like scrum standups are short in duration and help in improving the overall agility of the team. The following can be helpful as metrics for evaluating a switch to kanban over scrum based implementations Prioritization in Iterations Event based approach compared to time bound targets per sprint Departure from scrum based Timebox approach It is the time taken between request made and the delivery This is a better metric than Velocity as calculated for Scrum This will help show effectiveness of Kanban and it should be preferably as low as

Lead Time

Work in Progress

Batch Size Variability of Tasks

Overall velocity of the team

Throughput Rate MUDA Cycle Time

possible Reduces the work runs. There should be little variation In two successive tasks as it causes large delays due to ramp up and ramp downs. Less variability will increase the productivity This is computed as the effort as story points and determining how many story points were completed per cycle This can be used for individual analysis Reducing this will help increase the optimization throughout the process. This time is the time taken from start of actual work to delivery of the requested change.

Based on the above metrics it can be seen that it would be better to convert all scrum based implementations to Kanban in phase wised manner while deploying the required change management measures to sensitize the workforce.