How did the Toyota Production System influence the formation of Agile practices, and what advances in systems thinking can be useful to Agile thinkers today? This also interview examines the current state of software development in Japan, where waterfall processes still hold sway but Agile techniques are taking hold.
Lean software development has been inspired by lean manufacturing and specifically the work that Toyota pioneered in the field. It is then very surprising to find out that the software development arm of Toyota has been working with waterfall and is in it's infancy in lean software development.
One component of the Toyota Production System is the concept of standard (or standardized) work. A recent post on the Kanban Development list asked if this concept carries over when TPS and lean are applied to software projects. Despite the fact that software development is not manufacturing, respondents did find value in applying the 'standard work' concept to development.
Is the role of an agile manager only that of servant leader? Should they ever use traditional command and control tools? Should the agile manager ever wield authority and make demands of the team? Should they ever make changes in the membership?
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.
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.
Taiichi Ohno discovered some counter-intuitive truths as he developed the Toyota System. Similar counter-intuitive truths wait to be discovered by leaders of service organisations. When they are understood and applied, service organisations' performance is transformed to levels that, to the current mind-set, would be considered unachievable.
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.
In this 90-minute talk from the Agile2007 conference, Lean software thought leader Mary Poppendieck reviewed 20th century management theories, including Toyota and Deming, and went on to talk about "the matrix problem", alignment, waste cutting, planning and standards. She closed by addressing the role of measurement: "cash flow thinking" over "balance sheet thinking".
