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Q&A and Book Review of Scrum For The Rest of Us

Can you use Scrum outside software development? Brian Rabon wrote the book Scrum for the rest of us, a distilled guide that describes the essence of Scrum. This book explains Scrum without using information technology jargon which makes it suitable for all kinds of teams that want to use the Scrum method for managing their projects.

Ben Linders
on Jun 20, 2014
Book Review and Q&A of Strength-based Lean Six Sigma

The book Strength-based Lean Six Sigma: Building Positive and Engaging Business Improvement by David Shaked supports applying strength-based change approaches with lean thinking and Six Sigma. InfoQ interviewed David about applying strength-based techniques like appreciative inquiry, solution focused, positive deviance and 5-why's with Lean Six Sigma, and measuring performance in organizations.

Ben Linders
on Jun 16, 2014
Kanban on Track - Evolutionary Change Management at the Swiss Railways

Swiss Railways (Schweizerische Bundesbahnen, SBB) employed Kanban to transform a department from disappointing performance to predictable efficiency through a series of incremental improvements. The evolutionary nature of Kanban gained traction with early quick wins and resulted in better management and greater responsiveness to change. This is a brief report of their two year journey.

Mike Beyer Sigi Kaltenecker
on Apr 28, 2014
Culture is the True North - Scaling at Jimdo

A lot of the pain that large and medium-sized organizations are facing boils down to scaling. It is not difficult to have 5-10 people working together in one room. However, as your business becomes more successful and your hiring increases, you will start to see problems. At Jimdo, the approach to scaling relies on three major factors: culture, communication, and kaizen.

Arne Roock
on Apr 24, 2014
Untangling the Enterprise With Continuous Delivery

John Kordyback explains why you should and how you can introduce Continuous Delivery into a typical enterprise, where dozens of systems adopted over the years generate massive complexity. Learn how value-stream mapping and Lean Startup thinking help to create a deployment process which serves as a solid foundation for further improvements on the whole software change lifecycle.

John Kordyback
on Apr 16, 2014
Bug Fixing Vs. Problem Solving - From Agile to Lean

Lean has proved to be instrumental in moving beyond Agile to set up a practice of continuous improvement with direct effects on team performance and engagement. Making a clear distinction between bugs and problems has proved to be instrumental in this improvement.

Cecil Dijoux
on Apr 07, 2014
3 years of Kanban at Sandvik IT: Sustaining Kanban in the Enterprise

This second article in the “3 years of Kanban at Sandvik IT” series focuses on the lessons that the System Development Office learned when sustaining the Kanban method during this 4 years journey. Presented are four qualities that Sandvik IT identified as key when setting-up relevant, and long-term, kanban systems in the enterprise: Stickiness, Clarity, Curiosity and Influence.

Christophe Achouiantz
on Mar 11, 2014
The Kanban Survivability Agenda

This third and last article in the series on the Kanban “nine values, three agendas” model explores the survivability agenda. The values associated with this agenda are understanding, agreement, and respect; these say much about the philosophy that underlies Kanban, the humane, start with what you do now approach to change.

Mike Burrows
on Feb 20, 2014
Reliable Auto-Scaling using Feedback Control

Philipp K. Janert explains how to reliably auto-scale systems using a reactive approach based on feedback control which provides a more accurate solution than deterministic or rule-based ones.

Philipp K. Janert
on Feb 19, 2014
3 years of Kanban at Sandvik IT: The Story of an Improvement Journey

This is the story of an enterprise-wide Kanban implementation. It explains why Sandvik IT chose the Kanban method; how it was deployed using a kick-start concept; how it was followed-up using a depth-of-kanban assessment; and the effects so far. The article includes links to concrete and step-by-step information on how to run these kick-starts and assessments

Christophe Achouiantz
on Feb 10, 2014
Kanban’s service orientation agenda

This second article in the series on the Kanban “nine values, three agendas” model explores the service orientation agenda. Building on the sustainability agenda, this agenda adds the values of customer focus, flow, and leadership. Individually, each of these brings some challenge; collectively, they can represent to a significant sense of direction, a much more outward-looking approach to change.

Mike Burrows
on Jan 29, 2014
The Sustainability Agenda in Kanban

This first article in the series on the Kanban “nine values, three agendas” model, explores the sustainability agenda: a common approach to Kanban adoption at the level of individuals and teams, often motivated by the need for relief from unsustainable practices and workloads. This sustainability agenda draws on the Kanban values transparency, balance, and collaboration.

Mike Burrows
on Jan 06, 2014

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