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For Agile developers only familiar with Scrum or XP, it may be unclear how Lean relates to what they do. This article introduces Lean Thinking and how it enhances software development. Ning Lu of ThoughtWorks China identified the biggest obstacle to Lean or Agile as the mind-set developed during the period of large-scale manufacturing.
A Scrum team has no designated leader; the team is expected to self-organize. Similarly, one of the world's most renowned orchestras has dispensed entirely with the role of conductor in favor of a process where leadership is shared and decisions are made by the team. Along the way, they have learned lessons and ways of working together that any Scrum team can benefit from.
Sometimes teams have trouble starting new habits: writing unit tests, fix compiler warnings, not breaking the build. How do we help the team change these habits? Clint Shank designed a game to help people transition.
Blogger Gustavo Duarte cursed in church when he said that learning new programming languages is often a waste of time. He said that "In reality learning a new language is a gritty business in which most of the effort is spent on low-value tasks with poor return on time invested.". But not everyone agreed.
What does it take to create a high-performing team? According to Doug Shimp and Samall Hazziez, a "Well Formed Team" exhibits the following characteristics: follow Agile and Lean principles, use an adaptive system with a feedback loop, are focused on the business vision, are passionate and hyper-productive.
The discussion of applying lean principles to software development has largely focused on identifying and eliminating waste (in Japanese: muda). Lean Thinking equally aims to remove overburden (muri) and unnecessary variation (mura). Roman Pichler discusses the relationship of the "three M's" and proposes to eliminate overburden as the first step toward a leaner process.
The 'Retrospective Prime Directive' is a practice used by many teams as part of their continuous improvement cycle. As outlined in Norm Kerth's book, it is intended to foster the deep learning that is the heart of a retrospective. This article is an enlightening conversation, captured by Linda Rising, between senior practitioners on the benefits and the challenges of using this practice.
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.
When Agile teams get stuck in the just-average Norming stage, rather than continuting to the exciting, high Performing stage of teamwork, sometimes they're suffering from an invisible "learning bottleneck" that stunts team performance. Agile practices require us to take time to reflect and learn - and a team that learns quickly succeeds.
