Runs on PeopleBlog / Delivery · 3 min read
Scrum, Kanban, Scrumban, Shape Up or waterfall? Choosing how to structure the work
There's no best method, only the right fit for the work in front of you. A plain guide to choosing, and an honest word on the company that wants quarterly commitments and calls itself agile.
The situation
Someone senior read a book, or a new tool arrived, and now the team is "going agile". Or you've been doing two-week sprints for years and nobody can remember why. Either way, the method was chosen before anyone looked at the work.
What's really going on
Every method is a set of agreements about how work flows. Each fits some kinds of work and fights others. Choosing badly isn't a process failure. It's a mismatch between the agreement and the reality, and the people feel it first.
The quick guide
| Method | Fits work that is… | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Kanban | A steady flow of varied requests: support, operations, platform work | No natural moment to step back. Book your reviews. |
| Scrum | Product work you can slice into two-week chunks, with a clear owner | Ceremonies without purpose; sprint goals that are just a list |
| Scrumban | A team doing both planned product work and unplanned requests | Drifting into neither: no WIP limits and no real sprint goal |
| Shape Up | Product bets where the problem is clear but the solution isn't | Needs real shaping and trust both ways, or it's just short waterfall |
| Waterfall | Fixed, well-understood work with hard external dates: regulation, construction, a known migration | Treating uncertain work as if it were certain |
| SAFe | Many teams that must deliver together on a shared cadence | Ceremony replacing conversation |
Four questions to choose
- How predictable is the work? Unpredictable requests: Kanban. Plannable chunks: Scrum or Shape Up. Fully known: waterfall can be honest.
- How big are the pieces? Hours to days: Kanban. One to two weeks: Scrum. Six weeks: Shape Up. Months: waterfall or phased plans.
- Who decides what's next? One product owner: Scrum. A betting table: Shape Up. Whoever's request is most urgent: Kanban, with clear rules.
- How many teams depend on each other? One team: anything. Several: you need a shared cadence, whatever you call it.
You can mix. Many good teams run Kanban for operational work and Shape Up or Scrum for product bets, side by side, with capacity split up front.
The quarterly commitment problem
Here's the uncomfortable bit. Many organisations say they're agile, then ask every team for a fixed list of features, committed for the quarter, with dates. That's waterfall in three-month instalments, sometimes called "water-scrum-fall": agile words at team level, fixed plans everywhere else.
It isn't wrong to want predictability. Leaders have budgets, customers and boards. The problem is pretending you can have fixed scope, fixed time and full agility all at once. You can't. Something has to flex.
What to do about it:
- Commit to outcomes, not feature lists. "Cut checkout errors by 30% this quarter" is a commitment you can keep while learning how.
- Fix time and flex scope, as Shape Up does. Be clear in advance about what gets cut if it runs long.
- Separate forecasts from promises. "We expect to deliver these three; we commit to the first one."
- Show your confidence. A plan with "high, medium, low" next to each item is more honest than one with dates on everything.
- Name it kindly, upwards: "We can give you a fixed list or the ability to change course. Which matters more this quarter?"
In other industries
A GP practice running a new clinic launch, an audit firm in busy season, a factory changing a line: the same questions apply. Steady flow wants Kanban-style limits. Big fixed projects want honest plans. And everyone benefits from saying what's committed and what's a forecast.
Try this week
Answer the four questions for your team's current work. If the method you use doesn't match, name the mismatch at your next retro.
Think about it
Is your team's method chosen for the work, or for how it looks on a slide?
Keep reading
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