Is Scrum Lean?

In my last post, I described some work I’ve been doing with lean thinking in some larger software enterprises – not so much for teams themselves, who generally find Scrum and/with/or XP to be adequate for their needs – but to other levels in the organization – project office, sales, marketing and distribution – where value [...]

Are Scrum and XP Lean? (Part 1)

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m working with a number of large-scale agile transformations, most deploying Scrum. However, while Scrum drives agility and efficiency for the software development team, Scrum (or XP) doesn’t have so much to offer to the line managers, directors and VPs engaged in managing development, project, program, and product [...]

Thoughts on Lean Thinking

As readers of this blog are probably aware,  I’ve been thinking a lot about Lean Thinking lately. (see Lean Thinking category on this blog).
The cause is natural: as agile moves across the chasm to the large (and really large) enterprise, which is where I spend most of my time, impediments to further enhancing productivity and [...]

Proceedings of Lean & Kanban 2009

Hardcopy proceedings of the Lean and Kanban 2009 Conference are available at the WordClay Bookstore. This is excellent reading for anyone who wants to understand what the latest “tip revision” thinking from Lean and Kanban experts like David Anderson, Eric Landes, Alan Shalloway, James Sutton, Corey Ladis and others. (My article with Juha-Markus Aalto on [...]

Lean and Scalable Requirements Information Model Published at Modern Analyst

The latest version of the Lean and Scalable Requirements Information Model for the Agile Enterprise is now published in the July ejournal of the ModernAnalyst.com. For those of you interested in trends in requirements practices, this is a good source for all things requirements and business analyst related, agile or not.
With respect to agile development, [...]

Ten Suggested Practices for Applying Agile/Lean Software Management Principles to Other Knowledge Work

Introduction
Recently, I’ve been asked to help some teams apply lean/agile/Scrum/XP-like project management practices to non-software development knowledge work.
These organizations have seen agile methods produce huge benefits in visibility, productivity, quality, empowerment and motivation in their software teams. They naturally want to understand whether these techniques can be effective in other knowledge work activities such as [...]

Perspectives on Lean & Kanban 2009

As a new entry into the software development conference marketplace, (along with all of the implications for potential impact implied by its labels), Lean & Kanban 2008 has created a bit of a buzz in the blogosphere. What follows is a short summary of some of the action:
The presentations for all the speakers from the [...]

More on the Lean and Kanban 2009 Conference

On reflection, the Lean and Kanban conference was one of the most impactful events I’ve attended in many years. In addition to Mike Cottmeyer’s blog, John Heintz has done at  an excellent summary of the conference. Also, a few of my personal reflections can be found at Israel Gat’s Agile Executive blog here.

Mike Cottmeyer is Live Blogging Presentations at Lean & Kanban 2009

I was thinking of posting some summary of the rich content presentations at this amazing conference. But my colleague Mike Cottmeyer (a founding member of the Lean Software and Systems Consortium) is doing a great job of summarizing the presentations on his blog www.Leading Agile.com.

Announcing the Formation of the Lean Software & Systems Consortium

For some time, I’ve been collaborating with some industry leaders about the potential to utilize lean methods and practices as a mechanism for 1) helping scale agility across the full enterprise and 2) providing new tools and techniques to further advance software engineering and management practices beyond the bounds of our current agile constructs.
In days prior to the Lean & Kanban 2009 formal [...]