Kenji Hiranabe is a recipient of the 2008 Gordon Pask Award for Contributions to Agile. He discusses the current state of Agile in Japan, and reflects on the influence that Japanese approaches (such as the Toyota Production System and Lean) have had on the Agile movement. He examines changes happening in the Japanese software industry that is creating an Agile friendly environment.
AgileJapan held it's third incarnation this year in Tokyo. The conference organizers decided to go ahead with their plans even though the event followed the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that devastated parts of northern Japan a month previous.Linda Rising was the keynote speaker and her words of encouragement for Japan echoed those felt by the rest of the world.
In this InfoQ article Kenji Hiranabe applies lessons learned while working with Japanese manufacturers. While many Agile teams are optimizing only a portion of the value stream, Hiranabe proposes a simple way to adapt lessons from Lean Manufacturing's "Kanban" visual tracking system to make process visible to more of the organization, for better communication and process improvement.
In the spirit of "information radiators and “big visible charts” Kenji Hiranabe proposes using Kanban Boards to organize three viewpoints (Time, Task, and Team) so the whole team understands the current status of the project and can work in an autonomous, motivated and collaborative manner.
Kenji Hiranabe talks about Toyota's development process of a new car. Kenji shares his experience meeting Nobuaki Katayama, former Chief Engineer at Toyota, and the lessons he learned from him.
