Scrum vs Kanban Methodology in Software Documentation
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Software development is such a process that differs from other kinds of engineering procedures. It requires the attention of a mobile and flexible team that is willing to respond quickly to changes. This is when Agile methodology steps in.
Agile methodology is a set of routines oriented toward the efficiency improvement of software development specialists.
It is more of a philosophy selecting principles that value adaptability and flexibility – Agile aims to provide better awareness to changing business needs. One can apply various frameworks within Agile project management to develop and deliver a product or a service. Each agile framework highlights a specific approach and focuses on a determined result. A particular Agile approach is chosen depending on the requested outcome. They each have their own set of characteristics and terminology, but at the same time, they share common principles and practices.
Two of the most popular approaches that support the Agile development life cycle are Scrum and Kanban.
Scrum stands for delivering high-quality software in a minimum amount of time. It uses iterative timeboxes called sprints. Sprints last four weeks at most and have clear start and finish dates. Throughout the sprint teams:
A Scrum team consists of three roles:
Scrum is created to ensure that teams are working at a constant pace and consistently improving throughout a project, and the work is completed in time. With the Scrum model, team communication is a priority. The team must understand precisely the tasks they are working on and the progress that is being made. That helps the team move toward the goal without stumbling on many barriers along the way. In addition, the scrum master can track the team’s progress and initiate “speed” encouragement when needed with performance schedules.
Kanban promotes changing environments, constant iteration, and agile delivery. The Kanban approach also helps you visualize your workflow and locate any current issues. Kanban board is the main tool that helps to visualize the development process. Typically it has three visual columns — To Do, Work in progress, Done. You can insert tasks constantly during the work process when the team needs to adapt to the changing wants of the end-user.
Kanban has six main principles that any team should adhere to when working with it:
As you may see, Scrum and Kanban are very alike as they are both subsets of the Agile philosophy. At the same time, they differ in ways that can make you prefer one over the other. Let’s see their distinctions.
Kanban methodologies are constant and more variable when Scrum is based on short and structured sprints.
Scrum is a complex and strict methodology with many rules and a highly specific framework that teams must adhere to. Kanban is a leaner approach with fewer rules and a simpler framework. Both, however, help teams adhere to the core principles of Agile.
Kanban uses an assembly-line approach to move work through a queue. Like Scrum, Kanban has a backlog of prioritized project tasks, but rather than planning work in sprints; team members take the highest-priority task in the backlog that’s ready to be completed. Whereas Scrum processes require high control over what is in scope, Kanban lets you float with the stream.
Neither methodology is better than the other. The right choice for your team depends on your organizational structure, team preferences, and the specifics of your work and project.
Another important thing is that you don’t necessarily have to always adhere to one methodology. In fact, teams that have been working together for a while can easily switch back and forth between the two methodologies to accommodate different types of projects and sets of work.
Agile development methodology was created as an alternative to the documentation-driven development process; it did mean to eradicate internal documentation. It just added more value to working software than on comprehensive documentation because software development is dynamic.
So if you need to create a lot of documentation for the project, nothing in the Agile development methodology inherently prevents you from doing it.
Therefore, the documentation should be as efficient as possible to achieve relevant goals in agile software development projects. Agile documentation is an approach to create compact documents that address the immediate situation.
Software success is impossible without good documentation practices. It can be challenging to develop a software product from scratch, launch it, and then attract users. So, to keep everyone in sync and make it easier to navigate, the concept of software documentation emerged. Software documentation describes the development, functionality, and/or the use of a software product. Writing effective software documentation is a complicated process, requiring technical writing expertise.
Agile software development methodology is about the rapid deployment of changes into the software since it advocates adaptive planning, evolutionary development, and continuous integration. It is interesting, though, that agile documentation as a term doesn’t exist. However, it is widely used to imply the active documentation done while the software product is being created using Agile practices. With every project being different, there are different types of documentation that can be maintained by the teams. But two main categories for software documentation are:
Examples of possible Agile documentation include tables, diagrams, case studies, etc. Here are some of the documents you might want to create during your project:
Without a technical documentation management process, tasks can come from any source spontaneously and be assigned to the development team, with little information or resources allocation. By adapting the Scrum process for managing technical documents, this scenario can be avoided. In addition, managing and tracking projects this way gives each team member greater transparency and responsibility for working with documentation.
The tech documentation managing process includes the following steps:
In Kanban, there is no prescribed documentation of any kind. It is a very lightweight, continuous flow process that is simpler compared to that of Scrum. Each work item in Kanban is processed individually as soon as capacity is available to work on it. Let’s see an example of how this methodology works with documentation.
Imagine you have a large pile of documentation accumulated over time, and you need to structurize it somehow. What will you do?
There! Now you have the logical structure with the help of Kanban board card sorting. Your content is set up in a way to give users the information they’re looking for.
In any case, your Kanban board should evolve as you understand your process more and you start making changes to become leaner.
You may say that the documentation in Agile is “fluid” and is collaboratively maintained by the whole team. There are a few simple rules:
If you want to make all of the above possible, you need flexible and easily accessible software documentation tool.
The Agile methodology gives you the ability to be highly responsive to changes and make improvements while you’re documenting your agile project. As for Scrum and Kanban practices – it is easy to point out the differences between the two, but that’s just at the surface level. While the practices differ, the principles are largely the same. Both frameworks will help you make better products (and documents) with fewer headaches.
Good luck with your technical writing!
ClickHelp Team
Author, host and deliver documentation across platforms and devices
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