What’s the difference between Scrum, Kanban, XP (eXtreme Programming), Lean, and DevOps? How do you choose which one to use?

This is a common question I hear. Often asked just about two, but often the whole list. “Should my new team use Scrum or XP?” or “Which is better, kanban or lean?”

These questions come from a good place: Wanting to know how to taylor a tool/framework to a situation.

But as is often the case when you don’t know what you don’t know, asking an intelligent question is difficult.

The truth is, none of these items directly replaces or conflicts with any of the others. In fact, you can use them all simultaneously.

Here’s a super, over-simplified explanation of each, to point you in the right direction, if you’re considering which, if any of these, you should investigate further:

• Scrum is about managing a team’s work
• Kanban is about optimizing flow, or throughput
• XP is about the particulars of software creation
• Lean is about optimizing systems
• DevOps is about promoting collaboration between developers, operations, and any other groups involved in product creation