Let It Flow

  Agile   Manufacturing   ProjectsAtWork  

Lean Startup principles provide a foundation for organizations to marry Agile software delivery with business innovation. But it requires project managers to think in terms of ‘flow’ and see their projects as systems in concert with a fresh approach to application lifecycle management. Here’s an overview of how it works.

Over the last 18 months, Lean Startup has become popular[i]. It describes an approach to startups that marries Agile with the customer-driven development described by Steven Blank[ii]. The result is a software delivery approach that looks very lean, focusing on increasing customer value while reducing waste.

With the success of Lean Startup in the entrepreneurial world, many are now taking the principles of Lean Startup and applying them to problems in more traditional IT organizations. These principles include hypothesis-driven development, increased customer feedback, and the ability to pivot.

But perhaps the most interesting outcome of marrying Lean with software delivery is the idea of flow —how software projects take an idea and have it flow into a finished product and ultimately customer value. To understand flow, projects managers need to start thinking of their projects as systems, and software delivery as a business process. This requires Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), the application of business management to the practice …

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