Scrumban in Hybrid Environments: An Empirical Investigation of Organizational Use and Impact in Development Teams

Abstract

Context: Agile software development methodologies, such as Scrum, Kanban, and Scrumban, have gained prominence in Software Engineering by promoting greater flexibility and workflow visibility. Scrumban, in particular, combines elements of Scrum and Kanban and represents a promising alternative in contexts that demand continuous adaptation, such as hybrid projects integrating software and hardware development. Goal: This study aims to understand how Scrumban is adopted, adapted, used, and perceived in hybrid software and hardware development contexts, considering both the operational perspective of development teams and the management perspective. Method: We conducted a field study at a Brazilian Research, Development, and Innovation (RD&I) institute using two complementary sources of evidence. We collected survey responses from 15 members of multidisciplinary development teams to capture their experiences and perceptions of using Scrumban. We complemented these data with semi-structured interviews with three management professionals directly involved in its adoption and implementation. We qualitatively analyzed both data sources using Open Coding and Axial Coding procedures informed by Grounded Theory and integrated the findings according to the research questions. Results: The findings show that the adoption of Scrumban was motivated by the need to improve coordination, workflow visibility, and integration across software and hardware activities. Participants perceived benefits related to communication, cross-area coordination, project monitoring, risk identification, decision-making, and resource planning. However, the findings also reveal that Scrumban requires adaptations to accommodate hardware-specific characteristics, including longer development cycles, physical and supplier dependencies, different task granularities, and activities that are less amenable to frequent decomposition. Differences in experience with agile practices and resistance to process changes also emerged as adoption challenges. The integration of team and management perspectives further demonstrates that Scrumban provides complementary value across organizational levels, connecting operational coordination with broader project and organizational needs. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that Scrumban can support hybrid software and hardware development when organizations treat it as an adaptable coordination structure rather than as a uniform process. Its use benefits from shared communication and workflow visibility mechanisms while requiring sufficient flexibility to accommodate domain-specific characteristics. The study provides evidence on the use of Scrumban in an underexplored hybrid development context and offers practical insights for organizations coordinating multidisciplinary software and hardware teams.