What are the agile methods? - Agile methods in general and in relation to Kanban

If you want to enter the fascinating agile world, you need the right mindset. This mindset is reflected in the Agile Manifesto, along with shared values such as focus, respect, transparency, commitment and alignment.

The mindset focuses on delivering value and putting the customer and their needs first. Some of the components of this agile world include: Design Thinking, Lean Startup, Scrum, Kanban, DevOps, ITIL 4 and SAFe.

We will now give a compact overview of these frameworks:

Design Thinking

The method provides a process, mindset, and tools to experience a change in perspective and think "out of the box" to create innovation and value. For more information, you can listen to a webinar on it here or one of our podcasts.

Lean Startup

Concepts like "fail fast" and "MVP" were made famous by Lean Startup. Eric Ries, the developer of the method, invites us to test our ideas and prototypes as quickly as possible with real feedback and users to adapt quickly and deliver products that truly bring value. His book is called The Lean Start Up.

Scrum

Through iterative and incremental work, Scrum allows us to develop products that bring value together with the customer. You are welcome to watch a webinar on Scrum.

Kanban

A way to represent processes and tasks visually and simply, with a focus on reducing cycle time and staying in the flow. I can highly recommend the book "Kanban, David J. Anderson". And also the video on YouTube by Niklas Modig at TEDxUmeå (20 minutes) explains the concept of Flowefficiency in a very clear way.

DevOps

This is where two cultures and mindsets come together: Development and Operations. Development focuses on new products, rapid developments and customer needs. Operations focuses on stability, reliability and standardization: "Never change a running system!" DevOps brings together several practices that build bridges to bring these two different mindsets closer together. For more information, you can find a video explaining DevOps at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKOIMCPSyMY.

ITIL 4

Here you will find a library completely full of practices that will help you design a successful IT Service Management. ITIL 4 is a transformation of ITIL as we have known it: It provides a new perspective and mindset that allows us to understand the customer and their needs in order to deliver value. The framework is based on Design Thinking and Custumer Centricity, here we explain the connection between Design Thinking and ITIL 4 . For more information about ITIL 4 you can watch this video.

SAFe

Scaled Agile Framework promises to bring a structure and hierarchy to agile to make it easier for larger teams and organizations to work. Even with the new version, SAFe combines much of Design Thinking and Customer Centricity, and also incorporates elements from DevOps, Kanban and Scrum.

Expert tip: Which agile method offers the best start?

Kanban is my favorite to start the journey into agility. It clarifies the mindset behind it and sets the stage for working smoothly with the other frameworks.

With Kanban, you can make processes and bottlenecks visible, define clear tasks and classify and track them within the processes. This makes it a perfect tool for any agile method and framework. Besides that, it creates understanding for the importance of delivering value. And finally, it makes you realize the importance of visual communication and learn to deal with mistakes from a different perspective.

Kanban brings every framework decisively further

Many Agile frameworks and methodologies use Kanban as a tool to organize and visualize work and processes. This can be observed very well in SAFe by looking at the Big Picture (see Kanban boards at each level: Team, Program Large Solution and Portfolio).

Kanban is also wonderfully usable for DevOps and Scrum. The artifacts can be easily integrated into a process board. This gives the teams the opportunity to "pull" the work from the backlog themselves (pull principle). And they know at all times how quickly they are progressing as a team and approaching the common goal.

Likewise, Kanban can be linked with Design Thinking. The results of a Design Thinking workshop can be organized and prioritized in the form of tasks in a Kanban board. For this process I recommend User Story Mapping as an intermediate step.

You can find a webinar with an overview of all important agile methods on our SERVIEW YouTube channel. On the Serview website you can find information about the trainings from the different topics, ask a contact person for advice or book the trainings directly!