"Scrumban" by Cory Ladas, Book Review

Lean Development has been slowly gaining momentum in recent years. But no one really understands it. This is the first book that I found that talks about Scrum-ban: the fusion of Lean and Kanban. And, surprisingly, it's one of the best books on software development practices I've ever read.

For years, I felt luck a swan between the ducks. So many things in traditional Agile practices did not make sense to me, that I was beginning to doubt that I knew what I was doing. I can finally rejoice. Cory Ladas showed me that I had reasons to doubt the sanity of the mainstream.

Anyone ever doubted that Pair Programming may not be such a great practice? Anyone ever doubted that some of the other features of XP were not quite adoptable to larger companies and teams? How about not having any requirements? Sounds great, but who would ever try to deal with an outsourcer without providing detailed specifications of the end product?

Is XP bad? No. Is Scrum bad? Absolutely not. But each of them has its own deficiencies that can be addressed by Kanban. For once, Kanban gives us a better control of the project and a much clearer boundary between management and development teams. Is Kanban applicable to anybody? Perhaps not, but we now have an option to consider.

This book is by no means dogmatic. Every recommendation and conclusion is proven rigorously as if it were a theorem. All the ends logically meet and that makes the book a much easier read. The book is composed of several large essays that serve almost like chapters and neatly address a specific problem.

Every author is entitled to his/her opinion, and thus the book does produce a few recommendations. The most obvious one comes straight from the name of the book: "Scrumban". Scrum-ban is a fusion of Scrum and Kanban: a stepping stone on the way from completely Agile to completely Lean (Kanban); a temporary solution before we are ready to accept the way of the future.

It's amazing how history turnes itself around. We went from a tight process of the waterfall model to the free-wheeling times of Agile just to come back to a more controlled Lean again. And I thank the author for showing me how to do that.

Vlad