Cross-Breeding Lean and Agile

Joe Dager from the Business 901 blog and podcast is someone who has covered the cross-breeding of lean and agile more than most people.

So how does one apply Lean to agile software development? Wang, Conboy and Cawley examined thirty experience reports and came to the following conclusion:

Lean concepts, principles and practices are most often used for continuous agile process improvement, with the most recent introduction being the kanban approach, introducing a continuous, flow-based substitute to time-boxed agile processes.

But does that help? According to Swaminathan and Jain it “does seem to have significant benefits”.

References

• [2012,article] bibtex
  B. Swaminathan and K. Jain, "Implementing the Lean Concepts of Continuous Improvement and Flow on an Agile Software Development Project: An Industrial Case Study," Agile India, pp. 10-19, 2012.
  @article{citeulike:10477940, abstract = {The idea of applying lean principles to software development has been gathering a lot of interest over the last decade. Several books have been published exploring the lessons learned from manufacturing around lean. Some books have also taken the principles of lean manufacturing and provided the guidelines for adapting the same to software development. However, there is still a huge need for providing empirical evidence of application of lean principles to software development through real case studies. This paper attempts at making a contribution in that direction, by exploring the implementation of the ideas of continuous improvement and flow, which are so central to lean, on a real life industrial project. Besides exploring the practices that aid these concepts in agile software development, this paper also discusses some of the metrics that can be used for measuring and tracking progress of such a project. The study shows that applying the concepts of continuous improvement and flow to agile software development does seem to have significant benefits, and is something that needs to be extended further and applied to different project situations.},
  address = {Los Alamitos, CA, USA},
  author = {Swaminathan, Balachander and Jain, Karuna},
  citeulike-article-id = {10477940},
  citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/AgileIndia.2012.12},
  citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/agileindia.2012.12},
  doi = {10.1109/agileindia.2012.12},
  isbn = {978-0-7695-4657-5},
  journal = {Agile India},
  keywords = {20120320b},
  pages = {10--19},
  posted-date = {2012-03-20 04:56:40},
  priority = {2},
  publisher = {IEEE Computer Society},
  title = {Implementing the Lean Concepts of Continuous Improvement and Flow on an Agile Software Development Project: An Industrial Case Study},
  url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/agileindia.2012.12},
  volume = {0},
  year = {2012}
}
• [2012,article] bibtex
  X. Wang, K. Conboy, and O. Cawley, "” Leagile” software development: An experience report analysis of the application of lean approaches in agile software development," Journal of Systems and Software, vol. 85, iss. 6, pp. 1287-1299, 2012.
  @article{citeulike:10423481, abstract = {In recent years there has been a noticeable shift in attention from those who use agile software development toward lean software development, often labelled as a shift ” from agile to lean”. However, the reality may not be as simple or linear as this label implies. To provide a better understanding of lean software development approaches and how they are applied in agile software development, we have examined 30 experience reports published in past agile software conferences in which experiences of applying lean approaches in agile software development were reported. The analysis identified six types of lean application. The results of our study show that lean can be applied in agile processes in different manners for different purposes. Lean concepts, principles and practices are most often used for continuous agile process improvement, with the most recent introduction being the kanban approach, introducing a continuous, flow-based substitute to time-boxed agile processes.},
  author = {Wang, Xiaofeng and Conboy, Kieran and Cawley, Oisin},
  citeulike-article-id = {10423481},
  citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2012.01.061},
  doi = {10.1016/j.jss.2012.01.061},
  issn = {01641212},
  journal = {Journal of Systems and Software},
  keywords = {20120320b},
  month = jun, number = {6},
  pages = {1287--1299},
  posted-date = {2012-03-20 04:56:03},
  priority = {2},
  title = { ” Leagile” software development: An experience report analysis of the application of lean approaches in agile software development},
  url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2012.01.061},
  volume = {85},
  year = {2012}
}

Podcast on Agile on the Enterprise Level

Here is yet another great installment of the Business 901 podcast. This time on being agile on the enterprise level part 1, part 2.

I agree with most of what is said in the podcast, especially that there is no “one size fits all solution“. Different teams have different needs. Some people need Scrum, other Kan Ban and yet others just a general idea of how to do Lean.