Hofstadter’s Law put simply: A task will always take longer than expected.
This law underscores the importance of:
1) Setting realistic yet firm deadlines.
2) Being discipled in adhering to deadlines.
3) Estimating task be completed within short sprints and revisiting these estimates regularly.
Scrum addresses all those three, naturally.
However, with Kanban, in those three, therein lies the rub… a bad rub… if you are not disciplined in completing things with the least sustainable lead time.
You see, Scrum has sprints… it acts as a forcing function to finish and hence lead time is already at a maximum of the sprint’s length. Kanban does not have sprints! No forcing function to finish. Work could linger on within the system… cycling through unnecessarily… waiting for its turn to be attended to and completed (yes, there is start and go, and start again cycle)… causing a longer lead time than necessary. You need more discipline in Kanban than in Scrum in this context.
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