Cadence
- Scrum: Fixed sprints (1–4 weeks). Testing must finish inside the sprint.
- Kanban: Continuous flow. Testing starts as soon as work is ready.
When testing starts
- Scrum: During sprint planning; testing tasks go on the sprint board.
- Kanban: Immediately when a story moves to “In Development” or “Ready for Test”.
Deadline pressure
- Scrum: Hard sprint deadline – risk of carry-over if testing lags.
- Kanban: No sprint end – smoother pace but testing can become a bottleneck.
Definition of Done (DoD)
- Scrum: Mandatory and strictly enforced every sprint.
- Kanban: Also mandatory, enforced via explicit column exit policies and WIP limits.
Typical board columns
- Scrum: To Do → In Progress → Code Review → Testing → Done.
- Kanban: To Do → Dev → Ready for Test → Testing → Done (or similar).
Testing bottlenecks
- Scrum: Become visible at sprint end (burndown chart).
- Kanban: Visible instantly when the Testing column piles up.
Automation discipline
- Scrum: High – must match sprint velocity.
- Kanban: Even higher pressure – queue explodes if you don’t automate.
Exploratory & manual testing
- Scrum: Planned sessions inside the sprint.
- Kanban: Done ad-hoc or scheduled whenever needed.
Best for
- Scrum: Predictable cadence, strong quality gates, new feature teams.
- Kanban: Fast-moving features, production bugs, support-heavy teams, ML/experiments.
Risk of testing debt
- Scrum: Lower (sprint forces closure).
- Kanban: Higher if WIP limits on testing are missing or ignored.
2025 trends
- Scrum: Paired with AI tools (mabl, testRigor) for auto-healing inside sprints.
- Kanban: Often uses AI triage and “testing as a service” queues (Rainforest, testRigor monitoring).