Lean Agile

Lean Agile means different things to different folks in the Agile software development context.  The basic tenets of Lean are:
  • Eliminate waste
  • Amplify learning
  • Decide as late as possible
  • Deliver as fast as possible
  • Empower the team
  • Build integrity in
  • See the whole
For us personally, we are big fan to Edward Deming's Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle and also his approach to the "Deming System of Profound Knowledge", which looks at every system as a whole instead of just reacting to its parts (The Lean "See the Whole").  We believe this concept extends all the way from Deming's concept for Organization to Software development teams and right up to the last individual on the team.

Lean by itself grew from the manufacturing concepts at Toyota as the "Toyota Way" including concepts like Kaizen. But what works for Toyota may not work for say GM or VW or for you.  So the trick lies in finding "Your Way" that works for you.  Having said that, Lean Agile software development concepts are simple and easy to implement, if you understand them well and you know exactly what needs to be done to succeed and align value delivery.

We strongly believe that there is no necessity to start from scratch in deploying Lean Agile software development in the organization.  Two end-to-end Lean Agile software development methodologies include the Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) and the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and these can be used as a starting point for any endeavor.

We also strongly believe in two things (1) that no one consultant or a consulting organization have all the right answers and bringing in a team approach in leveraging your external internal resources/talent and the required external experts/specialists as the situation demands to get the right things done in order to succeed and (2) it is important that last member of your team understand the "why", why we do ever step of the process and to what end, so that the individual, Scrum team, the software development organization and the enterprise are in sync on the "why" and you don't need expensive consultants to continuously audit, set up governance and keep your wheels spinning.

Resources:
Edwards Deming
Lean Principles
Lean Software Development

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