How can you apply Scrum and Kanban methodologies to improve your system architecture design?

Scrum’s methodology reshapes software development with its structured “sprints.” Each sprint moves through planning, execution, review, and retrospective stages. This design ensures a systematic yet adaptable workflow, integrating daily insights and stakeholder feedback. Instead of merely completing tasks, the focus shifts to continuous improvement and adaptation, driven by retrospectives. Essentially, Scrum turns development from a static checklist into a dynamic, feedback-driven loop, promoting efficiency and evolution.

Scrum brings valuable advantages to system architecture design. It introduces time-bound sprints that promote iterative design, encourages cross-functional collaboration, and allows for effective backlog prioritization. Thanks to its interactive nature, frequent two-way feedback on system architecture design and implementation is common, facilitating the integration of improvements and compromises into the design process and preventing architectural drift. Prioritization plays a vital role in the creation of an MVP system and ensures that high-impact features are addressed promptly. However, activities associated with Scrum, like the frequency of meetings and ceremonies, can potentially take up a substantial portion of time.

Scrum, an agile methodology, provides a structured approach to project management and product development, with a strong emphasis on collaboration and customer satisfaction. Scrum teams work in defined timeframes called "Sprints," usually lasting 2-4 weeks, where they collectively plan, execute, and assess their work. Key roles within the Scrum framework include the Scrum Master, responsible for facilitating the process, the Product Owner, managing the product backlog, and the Development Team, responsible for delivery. Daily Stand-Up meetings ensure team alignment, while Sprint Reviews and Retrospectives foster continuous improvement. Iterative development, a customer-centric approach, and a focus on delivering value are key to customers.

At a high level, by integrating Scrum and Kanban, you can make the process of designing or improving system architecture more transparent, flexible, and efficient. This combination allows for the structured iterative approach of Scrum and the continuous flow and visualization of Kanban.

Only if we adapt them to have less meetins, better communication The teams fails because the tools are not used properly because we have a loot of meetings and noone wants to read them, the meetings fails because everything should be expressed in tools so we don't say everything or nobody pays attention Retros become useless after the 3 because if you bring a problem the action will be assigned to you so you will have more things to do besides the usually tasks Planning usually are not complete and we finish definition on the way So we end using slack as the ppal tool and the only source of truth

One thing to mention here is the flexibility of Scrum planning. Scrum isn't a strict set of rules to follow but rather helpful recommendations. The core idea is that if you encounter problems in the middle of the process, the entire process can be paused, reevaluated, and even restarted from scratch. Another remarkable aspect is that a sprint is not necessarily a "complete it or die trying" scenario. Sprints are designed more for management and optimization, and due to their flexibility, they can be as complex as necessary to address the team's needs.

In my experience scrum makes teams less agile and is often a way for out of touch management teams in the enterprise to meet their waterfall style reporting requirements. It’s like anything - you take the good parts and ditch the heavy process-oriented parts. If your management and/or leadership is out of touch - they’re more susceptible to jumping on frameworks in the hopes of making it easier to show their value upwards. Two weeks sprints have been going out of vogue for some time now. It’s not a natural cadence for humans to operate within and while retros and planning are both very important aspects of a time and product delivery - there’s no reason they have to fit within a sprint cycle. Agile = Good. Scrum = Mostly Bad.

Scrum is a sprint based product development framework. Kanban provides the strategy to optimize the flow of value through the development. Further, scrum defines the roles while Kanban has no required roles. Kanban boards are continuously in rotation and scrum boards reset after each sprint. The primary difference is that Scrum helps the team to structure and manage their work through a shared goals while Kanban relies on visual tasks.

os permite y da la facilidad de poder tener acceso fácil y simple al estado actual de nuestro producto. Nos permite ver a futuro cuáles serán los pasos a seguir además de tener claridad en la velocidad del equipo.

crum and Kanban are two methodologies that can be used to improve the design of your system architecture. Here’s how you can apply them: Scrum - Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective. Kanban- Visualize the workflow, Limit Work in Progress (WIP), Manage Flow, Continuous Improvement. Remember, the goal of using Scrum and Kanban in system architecture is to improve clarity, manage work effectively, and ultimately create a system that meets your needs and those of your stakeholders. It’s not just about following the methodologies rigidly, but about finding what works best for your team and your project.

Kanban is a distinct agile framework emphasizing visualization of tasks, workflow efficiency, and controlled work-in-progress. Employing a board segmented into workflow stages it offers a clear, real-time snapshot of a project's status, enabling teams to swiftly pinpoint bottlenecks or lags. Contrasting with Scrum's fixed iterations, Kanban's fluidity promotes a rhythm of continuous delivery, as tasks are "pulled" based on team capacity. The system inherently values adaptability and iterative enhancement, ensuring tasks are completed and optimized over time. Thus, Kanban provides teams with the agility to adapt, improve, and deliver consistently.

Kanban prioritizes capacity planning over traditional time-bound project planning, offering a flexible workflow. However, this can negatively impact system architecture design. It's harder to set milestones without time-bound iterations, urgent tasks may overshadow architecture, and shifts in priorities can disrupt design. With less cross-functional collaboration, alignment with project goals may suffer, and explicit dependency management becomes essential. The short-term focus may lead to overlooking long-term architectural planning and vision alignment.

Kanban's essence lies in its visual representation of tasks on boards or cards, efficiently guiding them through workflow stages. The primary aim is to limit work in progress (WIP), enhance task prioritization, and foster continuous improvement. Teams in the Kanban framework autonomously pull work based on their capacity, ensuring a smooth, bottleneck-free task flow. Its real-time project status visibility transforms workflows, enabling adaptability and customer-centricity. Kanban empowers teams to adapt swiftly to changing priorities while steadfastly focusing on exceptional results, making it an invaluable methodology in agile project management.

Kanban is a perfect methodology for small and medium-sized teams. It's like an unleashed version of Scrum, offering more freedom. Why is this the case? Because smaller teams don't need to invest time in identifying process bottlenecks and extensive reporting. Consequently, they are left with only the essential elements - a backlog of issues and their statuses. This streamlined approach allows the team to focus on project completion efficiently. Cool! Now your team can have just the right amount of management to successfully complete the project.

I believe that scrum and Kanban when applied properly can be beneficial to dev teams, but it loses a unique challenge for architecture. The constant and rapid evolution of an app with scrum can create significant pivots in very short time periods. Ones that underlying architecture decisions may not be able to adapt to as quickly. I find that it’s on the architect to really put flexibility at top of mind in their architecture when working in an agile env so they can adapt to this. Even to the point of valuing flexibility over other benefits. This can require higher levels of abstraction and encapsulation to make the architecture more modular.

Scrum and Kanban, while distinct in execution, fundamentally underpin an enlightened approach to system architecture design. Their emphasis on teamwork and dialogue ensures that architectural decisions don't operate in a vacuum but resonate with overarching business objectives and user aspirations. The cadence of regular deliveries, intrinsic to both methodologies, pivots the design process from theoretical speculation to tangible outputs, facilitating real-time validation. This not only preemptively flags potential discrepancies but also sets the stage for early rectifications. This agility ensures that system architecture remains resilient, dynamic, and attuned to evolving external stimuli.

the hybrid approach I propose integrates Scrum and Kanban methodologies to optimize system architecture design. Scrum provides the structure and discipline needed for initial planning and addressing high-priority features, while Kanban excels in managing ongoing maintenance and architectural refinements.

I believe that scrum and Kanban when applied properly can be beneficial to dev teams, but it loses a unique challenge for architecture. The constant and rapid evolution of an app with scrum can create significant pivots in very short time periods. Ones that underlying architecture decisions may not be able to adapt to as quickly. I find that it’s on the architect to really put flexibility at top of mind in their architecture when working in an agile env so they can adapt to this. Even to the point of valuing flexibility over other benefits. This can require higher levels of abstraction and encapsulation to make the architecture more modular.

While Scrum and Kanban offer innovative avenues for system architecture design, they're not without challenges. These frameworks demand unwavering discipline and alignment from all involved parties. They spotlight the intricate balance between delivering value and maintaining architectural integrity. The transparency they advocate can unveil the complex layers of system architecture, potentially daunting to some team members. Furthermore, they often pose a dilemma: speed versus quality. Navigating this trade-off requires strategic foresight, as a relentless pursuit of rapid deliveries may compromise quality and vice versa. Thus, while promising, these methodologies necessitate nuanced application to fully harness their potential.

Meeting deadlines and customer expectations can be a challenge in a purist Agile methodology. Agile is iterative, backlog items are refined and scheduled as capacity permits. But Customers expect a certain content and value to be delivered by a certain date. A good level of pre-design and pre-planning is often required, on top of the day to day Agile execution.

The Agile Manifesto values working software over comprehensive documentation, but documentation is still important for complex systems. However, neither Scrum nor Kanban require documentation. It is crucial to maintain Architectural Decision Records (ADRs) consistently in an iterative approach. One way to do this is to deviate from Agile best practices and make documentation part of the Definition of Done (DoD), but this may not be popular with purist Agilists. Another potential problem is that prioritizing new features over technical debt can lead to architectural challenges. Agile's focus on short-term value can also make it difficult to align with long-term goals, so some flexibility or a hybrid approach may be beneficial.

Harnessing Scrum and Kanban for system architecture design demands strategic implementation. Central to this is a unified vision and roadmap grounded by solid architectural principles. Leveraging established patterns and practices lends consistency, while routine reviews ensure alignment and quality. It's pivotal to acknowledge that architecture isn't static; fostering a culture of evolution and experimentation is crucial. By emphasizing modularity, decoupling, and abstraction, systems gain robustness for scalability and reliability. This holistic approach not only ensures adaptability in the face of shifting requirements but also primes the architecture to embrace and pioneer innovative solutions.

A few years ago I attended a session presented by Carnegie Melon that readjusted my thinking about architecture. So much of our attention in defining architecture is focused on developing robust platforms that will survive over time. What happens when priority changes mid-process? Should we over engineer to support every possible use case? On the contrary we should define just enough of the architecture to support the current iteration. The architecture may change in the next iteration. This meshes well with the use of Kanban and Scrum for architecture design. The Kanban discipline of controlling work in progress helps to ensure that the architecture team is not over-engineering to support features not yet in development.

Agile approaches like Scrum and Kanban can be very effective, but it's important to be flexible and adapt them to your specific needs. Inflexible Agile can lead to problems. Consider your organization's needs, domain requirements, and product type when choosing or adapting an Agile methodology. It's not a good idea to start with a custom Agile process, because existing methodologies are well-thought-out and proven. However, if your organization is new to Agile, it's best to start with a by-the-book approach until everyone understands it and its benefits. Over time, you can iteratively change things to fit your situation best.

Using Scrum for architectural planning in Sprint Planning, the team identifies architectural tasks as user stories in the Product Backlog. Sprint Goals are defined to address specific architectural improvements. Daily Stand-Ups ensure alignment on progress and challenges. Sprint Reviews and Retrospectives help the team refine the architecture continually. While addressing ongoing architectural refinements and technical debt, they implement Kanban. The team can create a Kanban board to visualize work stages, from design to testing and deployment. WIP limits prevent overloading the team. As architectural issues emerge, they are added to the Kanban board and prioritized. Continuous improvement in architecture becomes a part of their culture.

Leveraging Scrum and Kanban in systems architecture enhances design by facilitating an iterative and visually transparent workflow. Scrum’s sprints, especially Sprint Zero and spikes, allow for structured, foundational work and exploratory research, crucial in architectural decision-making. Kanban ensures continuous work-flow and identifies bottlenecks through visual management. Employing these in tandem enables architects to strategically navigate through the complexities of design, ensuring adaptability, stakeholder alignment, and robust, sustainable architectural outcomes.

Both Scrum & Kanban are popular & traditionally associated with project management & software development processes. However, aspects of these methodologies can be adapted to improve system architecture design. Here's how we can make it: Applying Scrum to System Architecture 1. Sprint Planning for Architecture 2. Architecture Backlog 3. Architectural User Stories 4. Scrum Events for Architecture 5. Cross-functional Collaboration Applying Kanban to System Architecture 1. Visualizing Architecture Workflow 2. Work in Progress Limits 3. Continuous Improvement 4. Pull System for Architecture Tasks 5. Metrics for Architectural Performance Through this, we can create adaptive & efficient approach to design that aligns with agile principles.

Scrum and Kanban are focused on iterative improvement and together with the connection to the customer feedback loop create an environment where the users are hoping to get a slightly better version of what they currently have. This might be challenging in a situation from the known example of users wanting a faster horse and not considering the option to get a car.

incorporating Scrum and Kanban methodologies into system architecture design, you can enhance collaboration, prioritize tasks effectively, increase transparency, and continuously improve the design process. These methodologies can help ensure that the architecture design meets the requirements, is scalable, maintainable, and aligned with the overall project goals

My experience has been that the 'Infrastructure' is deemed as critical by engineering, but only an afterthought enabler by other parts of the business as it is not a revenue generating. As such, work on the underlying system is deprioritized. Kannan and scrums are tools, they will not solve this problem on their own without a champion. When a feature is developed, either some new sellable capability or infrastructure, the relevant demos usually focus on the functional end to end workflows, but fail to highlight the system impact, the improved stability, the overall time wasted on poorly commented code, the effort wasted on solving support calls, etc. Sharing this input will allow engineering to utilize scrum or Kannan to improve from within

Applying Scrum enables collaborative architectural decisions aligned with evolving product goals, while Kanban ensures a steady flow of tasks, preventing overload and allowing focused architectural improvements. Together, they create a balanced, iterative, and adaptable approach to system architecture design.