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Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit
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In Lean Software Development, Mary and Tom Poppendieck identify seven
fundamental "lean" principles, adapt them for the world of software development,
and show how they can serve as the foundation for agile development approaches
that work. Along the way, they introduce 22 "thinking tools" that can
help you customize the right agile practices for any environment.
Better, cheaper, faster software development. You can have all three—if
you adopt the same lean principles that have already revolutionized manufacturing,
logistics and product development.
- Iterating towards excellence: software development as an exercise in discovery
- Managing uncertainty: "decide as late as possible" by building change into
the system.
- Compressing the value stream: rapid development, feedback, and improvement
- Empowering teams and individuals without compromising coordination
- Software with integrity: promoting coherence, usability, fitness,
maintainability, and adaptability
- How to "see the whole"—even when your developers are scattered across
multiple locations and contractors
Simply put, Lean Software Development helps you refocus development
on value, flow, and people—so you can achieve breakthrough quality,
savings, speed, and business alignment.
Author Bio
MARY POPPENDIECK, Managing Director of the Agile Alliance (a leading non profit
organization promoting agile software development), is a seasoned leader in
both operations and new product development with more than 25 years of IT experience.
She has led teams implementing solutions ranging from enterprise supply chain
management to digital media, and built one of 3M's first Just-in-Time lean production
systems. Mary is currently the President of Poppendieck LLC, a consulting firm
specializing in bringing lean production techniques to software development.
TOM POPPENDIECK was creating systems to support concurrent development of commercial
airliner navigation devices as early as 1985. Even then, the aerospace industry
recognized that sequential development of product design, manufacturing process
design and product support was costly and non-competitive. His subsequent experience
in software product development, COTS implementation, and most recently as a
coach, mentor, and enterprise architect support the same conclusion for software
development. He currently assists organizations that need to improve their software
development capabilities apply the lean principles and tools described in this
boo
Customer Reviews
Customer Reviews: 1 Average Customer Rating: Jun 9, 2003 Mike Cohn (mike@mountaingoatsoftware.com) from Boulder, CO
Excellent book that teaches agile (lean) thinking
Books written during the first phase of agile software development have been about very specific practices we should employ. There are some excellent books on the Extreme Programming, Feature-Driven Development and Scrum agile processes. These books teach us "do a, b, and c if you want to do Extreme Programming" or "do x, y and z if you want to do Scrum."
In the last year we've seen books by Highsmith (Agile Software Development Ecosystems) and Cockburn (Agile Software Development) that represent the second wave of agile software development-that of learning to think agilely rather than following a prescribed set of agile rules. Mary and Tom Poppendieck's book is the latest and best book for teaching how to think agilely.
The book contains 22 "thinking tools." The thinking tools are drawn from the world of lean manufacturing where they have helped improve product delivery speed, quality and cost. Each tool is presented as a guideline. Each thinking tool is described with enough detail that you can put it into practice; but, more importantly, the reasons supporting each are made explicit. So, instead of simply reading that it is good to "deliver as fast as possible" we learn how rapid delivery is supported by pull systems (where work is pulled into the current step from the prior step), how queuing theory helps us identify bottlenecks, and how to calculate the cost of delay (to see which bottlenecks are worth removing).
This book is the perfect blend of highly actionable instructions and descriptions of why those actions work. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wishes to improve his or her software development process. The authors' ideas are applicable both to projects using agile approaches today and to more traditional, plan-driven projects.
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