Having been in the forefront of most of the popular Agile and Lean methods for over two decades, I have seen great success and great frustration. While we’ve come a long way in improving our development methods, there are many popular beliefs that hold us back that haven’t been challenged. There are an equal number of concepts that would be of great value if they were generally adopted. I find the first set often interferes with the second.
I intend this page to provide a high level view to these two sets of concepts. They are presented in the order in which I believe it is easier to see their relationships to each other.
How To Deal With Complexity
There is no question that developing services and products is a complex endeavor. And attempts to improve how we do it is even more complex. But I believe we have lost our way. I do not ascribe to the belief that we cannot make decisions to improve our organizations that will predictably work. The current trend in vogue that we cannot inherently make accurate predictions on what will be an improvement holds us back from effective and smoother transformation.
See Dealing with Complexity for more.
Lessons on Batch Size
“Often reducing batch size is all it takes to bring a system back into control.” Dr Eli Goldratt
While the importance of small batches has been well established at the team level, it is not properly appreciated elsewhere.
More is coming, but in the mean time, you can read about Minimum Business Increments (MBIs).
Identifying and Managing Value Creation
The MBI will be of critical importance here.
Essential lessons of Lean – systems thinking, focus on time, value stream
The Role of Management
