Scrumban: The Best of Scrum and Kanban

Scrumban is a hybrid way of working that keeps Scrum's regular planning and review rhythm but runs the work itself as a continuous Kanban flow. Teams pull new work when they have capacity instead of locking scope for a full sprint, while still meeting regularly to prioritise and reflect.

It started as a bridge for teams moving from Scrum to Kanban. Plenty of teams never finished the move, because the middle ground suited them.

What Scrumban borrows from each side

From Scrum you keep:

• A regular planning meeting to refill the "ready" column.
• Retrospectives, so the process keeps improving.
• Optional time boxes for reporting and stakeholder updates.

From Kanban you keep:

• A visible board where cards move left to right through real stages.
• Limits on work in progress, so people finish before they start. Our guide to WIP limits covers how to set them.
• Pull, not push. Nobody assigns a developer five tickets on Monday morning; they take the next one when they are free.

What you usually drop: rigid sprint commitments, mandatory story-point estimates for every card, and the rule that scope cannot change mid-sprint.

When Scrumban fits

Scrumban works well when your work does not arrive in tidy two-week batches. Typical examples:

• A product team that also handles support tickets and urgent client requests.
• An agency maintaining several live sites alongside one bigger build.
• A team that found sprint planning took longer than the work it planned.

If your work is mostly a planned roadmap with stable priorities, plain Scrum may still serve you better. The Kanban vs Scrum comparison walks through that decision.

Running sprints right now? See how Flow handles boards, sprints and burndown together. Get started with Flow →

Setting up a Scrumban board

Start with columns that reflect how work really moves, not how a textbook says it should:

1. Backlog – everything not yet prioritised.
2. Ready – refined, prioritised and small enough to start. This is what planning refills.
3. In progress, Review, Testing – your real stages, each with a WIP limit.
4. Done – meets your definition of done.

Then set a planning trigger. Some teams plan every two weeks regardless; others plan whenever "Ready" drops below a set number of cards. Both are valid Scrumban.

Common pitfalls

• No WIP limits. Without them, Scrumban is just a board with too many cards in progress.
• Skipping retrospectives. The hybrid only works if you keep adjusting it.
• Treating the board as a to-do list. Columns should match handovers between people, not personal reminders.

How Flow helps

Trello is wonderfully simple and is often where a Scrumban board first appears. Jira gives you both Scrum and Kanban board types with deep configuration. If you are looking for a Trello alternative or a Jira alternative that handles the hybrid without much setup, Livex Flow covers it:

• A drag-and-drop Kanban board with custom columns you can rename, recolour and reorder to match your real stages.
• Sprints are optional. Start and complete them when you want a cadence, or run continuous flow with the same board.
• Process Flow lets you draw your delivery process visually; adding a stage creates the board column, and transition rules stop cards skipping steps like testing.
• Trello two-way sync and import from a Jira export, so you can trial the switch without abandoning your existing board on day one.