How Agile, Lean and Kanban relate?

[Hussein Baghdadi]

Hey,
I'm basically familiar with Agile methodology and Scrum.
But what is "Lean Software Development" and "Kanban"?
Is it safe to say that Scrum, Lean and Kanban are implementations of Agile methodology? or Lean and Kanban are different methodologies?
Do Lean and Kanban provide a skeleton (like Agile) and leave the implementation to a set of practice like XP and Scrum?
Thanks for help and time.

[Ilja Preuss]

First, Agile Software Development is NOT a methodology. It would rather describe it as a movement, perhaps a philosophy.

Scrum and XP both are approaches (I hesitate to say "processes"), that contributed to the Agile movement.

Lean Software Development is inspired by Lean Manufactoring, which is inspired by the Toyota Production System. From what I know, it looks like a rather high level description of the forces of software development, which makes it look to me at rather a similar level as the Agile movement.

Kanban is a project management process that is also inspired by a process of the same name from the Toyota Production System. It is roughly at the same level as Scrum, and can be seen as an alternative to it. There is also a hybrid process called Scrumban.

Lean and Kanban are generally considered to be very compatible with the Agile mindset. I would consider them part of the Agile family, but I have heard of people who would disagree.

Does that help?

[Hussein Baghdadi]

Yes, it does
How to release in Kanban?
In Scrum we release at the end of each Sprint but Kanban doesn't specify releasing.
One more question:
Does a release after each Sprint equivalent a "tag" in SCM?

[Ilja Preuss]

In Kanban, the system gets released whenever the responsible business person decides to.

Scrum doesn't specify when or even whether to "tag" the code base. That's deliberately left open for the self-organizing team to decide.