Project Management

Lean Thinking Provides a Philosophical Foundation for Scaling Agile

From the Disciplined Agile Blog
by , , , , , ,
This blog contains details about various aspects of PMI's Disciplined Agile (DA) tool kit, including new and upcoming topics.

About this Blog

RSS

View Posts By:

Tatsiana Balshakova
Mark Lines
Mike Griffiths
James Trott
Bjorn Gustafsson
Curtis Hibbs
Scott Ambler

Past Contributors:

Joshua Barnes
Michael Richardson
Daniel Gagnon
Valentin Tudor Mocanu
Kashmir Birk
Glen Little
Klaus Boedker

Recent Posts

DA 5.6 is released

Disciplined Agile 5.5 Released

Choose Your WoW! Second Edition Is Now Available

Requisite Agility applied in Project Management

Disciplined Agile and PMBoK Guide 7th Edition

Categories

#ChoiceIsGood, #ChooseYourWoW, #ConsumableSolution, #ContinuousImprovement, #CoreAgilePractices, #experiment, #Experimentation, #GuidedContinuousImprovement, #Kaizen, #LifeCycles, #ProcessImprovement, #TealOrganizations, Adoption, agile, agile adoption, Agile Alliance, Agile Business Analyst, Agile certification, agile data, agile governance, agile lifecycle, agile metrics, agile principles, agile transformation, Agile2018, Agile2019, Agile20Reflect, AgileData, Analogy, announcement, Architecture, architecture, architecture owner, Articles and publications, Asset Management, Atari, Backlog, Barclays, being agile, benefits, bi, blades, book, Branching strategies, Browser, Business Agility, business intelligence, business operations, capex, Case Study, Certification, certification, charity, Choose your WoW, CMMI, cmmi, Coaching, Collaboration, Communications Management, Compliance, Compliancy, Conference, Construction, Construction phase, Context, Continuous Improvement, coordination, COVID-19, Culture, culture, Cutter, DA, DAD, DAD Book, DAD discussions, DAD press, DAD roles, DAD supporters, DAD webcast, DADay2019, Data Management, database, dependencies, Deployment, Development Strategies, DevOps, disaster, Discipline, discipline, Disciplined Agile, disciplined agile delivery, disciplined agile delivery blog, Disciplined Agile Enterprise, disciplined devops, Documentation, Domain complexity, dw, DW/BI, Energy Healing, Enterprise Agile, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Awareness, enterprise awareness, Essence, estimation, Evolving DA, Executive, Experiment, facilitation, FailureBow, feedback-cycle, finance, Financial, FLEX, Flow, foundation layer, Funding, GCI, GDD, Geographic Distribution, gladwell, global development, Goal-Driven, goal-driven, goals, Governance, GQM, Guideline, Hybrid, Improvement, inception, Inception phase, India, information technology, infosec, Introduction, iterations, Kanban, large teams, layer, lean, Lean Startup, learning, Legal Project Management, LeSS, Lifecycle, lifecycle, Manifesto, mark lines, marketing, MBI, Metaphor, Metrics, metrics, mindset, Miscellaneous, MVP, News, News and events, Non-Functional Requirements, non-functional requirements, Non-solo development, offshoring, Operations, opex, Organization, Outsourcing, outsourcing, paired programming, pairing, paper, People, People Management, phases, Philosophies, Planning, PMBoK, PMI, PMI and DA, PMI Chapter, Portfolio Management, post-format-quote, Practices, practices, Principle, Process, process improvement, process tailoring, Product Management, product owner, Product Owners, productivity, Program Management, Project Management, project-initiation, Promise, Quality, quality, rational unified process, Refactoring, Reiki, Release Management, release management, Remote Training, Remote Work, repeatability, requirements, Requirements Management, research&development, responsibilities, retrospectives, Reuse, Reuse Engineering, ride for heart, rights, Risk Management, Risk Management, Risk management, Roles, RUP, SAFe, sales, Scaling, scaling, scaling agile, Scheduled Workshops, SCM, scorecard, Scrum, ScrumMaster, SDLC, Security, security, self-organization, SEMAT, serial, skill, solutions software consumable shippable, Stakeholder Management, strategy, Support, Surveys, Teal organizations, team development, Team Lead, team lead, Teams, Technical Debt, Teleconferencing, Terminology, terraforming, test strategy, testing, time tracking, Tool kit, Toolkit, tools, traditional, Transformation, Transition iteration, transition phase, Uncategorized, Upmentors, Using PMI Standards, value stream, velocity, vendor management, Virtual Training, Workflow, workflow, workspaces

Date

linkedin twitter facebook Request to reuse this  

Categories: agile, Kanban, lean, mindset, scaling, Scrum


Little ideas add up

Lean thinking is important for scaling agile in several ways:

  1. Lean provides an explanation for why many of the agile practices work.  For example, Agile Modeling’s practices of light weight, initial requirements envisioning followed by iteration modeling and just-in-time (JIT) model storming work because they defer commitment to the last most responsible moment.  These practices also help to eliminate waste because you’re only modeling what needs to be built at the point in time that it needs to be built.
  2. Lean offers insight into strategies for improving your software process.  Lean principles such as optimizing the whole and delivering quickly motivate you to look beyond your existing specialized processes to explore how everything fits together and to streamline it.  Identifying and understanding the sources of waste in your IT processes can motivate you to improve the way that you work and thereby eliminate the waste.  The lean principle of building quality in
  3. Lean thinking provides a philosophical foundation for scaling agile approaches.  No methodology, process, procedure, or framework is ever complete.  Nor can they be because you can always capture more detail for a wider range of situations.  Because of this incompleteness you need a collection of higher-level principles or philosophies to guide people when their process/procedure/… proves to be incomplete for the situation that they face.  Lean thinking has proven to be a very good source of such philosophies, as do other sources (Steven Covey’s principles come to mind, as does the work of Peter Senge).
  4. Lean provides techniques for identifying waste.  Value stream mapping, a technique common within the lean community whereby you model a process and then identify how much time is spent on value-added work versus wait time, helps calculate overall time efficiency of what you’re doing.  Value stream maps are a straightforward way to illuminate your IT processes, providing insight into where significant problems exist.  I’ve created value stream maps with several customers around the world where we analyzed their existing processes which some of their more traditional staff believed worked well only to discover they had efficiency ratings of 20-30%.  You can’t fix problems that you are blind to.

Posted by Scott Ambler on: July 10, 2016 09:19 AM | Permalink

Comments (0)

Please login or join to subscribe to this item


Please Login/Register to leave a comment.

ADVERTISEMENTS

"The industrial revolution was neither industrial nor a revolution - discuss"

- Linda Richman

ADVERTISEMENT

Sponsors