SOP: Choosing Kanban vs sprints for an ops team

SOP: Choosing Kanban vs sprints for an ops team

Run this whenever you set up a board for a recurring workflow and can't decide on the cadence.

Stage 1 — Classify the work
☐ Owner: team lead. Count what share of last 30 days was unplanned (support, fixes, requests).
☐ If over 40% unplanned → lean Kanban. If under 20% → sprints are viable.

Stage 2 — Test the tradeoff
☐ Kanban: no fixed dates, throttle by WIP limits. Use when arrival is random.
☐ Sprints: fixed 1-2 week batch, hard commitment. Use when you must promise dates to stakeholders.

Stage 3 — Pick the metric you'll defend
☐ Owner: lead. Kanban → cycle time + WIP. Sprints → commitment-vs-completed ratio.
☐ Done-when: board has WIP limits OR a sprint length written down, plus one tracked metric.

Trigger: new recurring workflow. Done-when: cadence and metric are documented, not assumed.

Save this. Run it every time.