lean and agile

Broken Field Running

lean and agile

Now that we’re in the thick of another US college football season, it occurs to me that IT application developers might benefit from having a different mental model to represent the work they do.

Process, Projects and Customers: The Unholy Trinity

lean and agile

One of the statements I regularly hear from IT developers that always surprises me is the assertion that: “Our customers dictate our process to us.”

I’m even further astonished when I hear developers justify this position by quoting an alleged lean principle to the effect that “if our customer is not willing to pay for something [an activity or interim deliverable], then it is waste, and should be eliminated.”

Really…?

An Agile Acid Test

lean and agile

One of the problems with Agile Software Development is the lack of any rigorous tool or method for determining any given project’s agility. To some extent, this can be considered a “feature” of Agile (and not a bug) since one of the core [Agile values][agile-manifesto] is a preference for “individuals and interactions over processes and tools.” At the same time, when managing a large-scale agile deployment at an organizational level, or providing consulting help to a number of different teams, there arises a legitimate need to distinguish between projects that can be fairly classified as Agile vs. others that may only be aspiring to this state.

Take the Agile Train

I noticed this week that jazz trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree from Harvard University.

Wynton Marsalis

This got me thinking about some of the notable messages from his and Geoffrey Ward’s recent book Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life.

A New Model for Lean Culture

lean and agile

Introduction

When companies attempt to implement lean principles, some of their biggest stumbling blocks seem to be the cultural elements. While some of the Toyota methods are very clear and specific, the cultural issues often seem more difficult to pin down. Many organizations seem to translate the most obvious elements into terms that they are comfortable with, but something often seems to get lost in the translation, and their lean implementations struggle because they have not really modified some of the basic ways in which they think about their work.

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