Insights From Three Agile/Lean Product Development Thought Leaders

Unfortunately though, the ease with which agile concepts can be grasped has in many cases trivialized the discipline necessary to be successful. As a result, while there are many organizations succeeding with agile, many are experiencing high profile project failures. Increasingly organizations are attempting to apply agile techniques on enterprise, large-scale mission critical projects. I see the degree of success of these projects as pivotal regarding long-term industry wide adoption of agile practices.

As an industry, we need to become more unified in our recommended practices to minimize the misinterpretation of what is truly working on projects. The variety of terminologies and bickering between agile thought leaders is harming the agile community at large. There are material gaps in the lifecycles of leading methods and these gaps are resulting in a large degree of variability in how those gaps are filled by practitioners.

I am optimistic however that leading methods such as Scrum will mature in terms of breadth of guidance so that there is more alignment and agreement on practices across the lifecycle. It should be clear however, that this is a good thing and should not be misinterpreted as prescriptive guidance. We all understand that there is no silver bullet process and that there is huge merit in adapting process via self organizing teams. On balance it is a great time to be in our industry as I see massive elimination of waste on projects compared to prior years, and shorter delivery timeframes resulting in greater ROI and payback on our IT investments. 

Here is what Ryan Martens (Rally, CTO amp; Founder) has to say:

Age of Reconsideration, Reform and Regeneration

The last decade marshaled in a new empirical way of working with increasingly complex, interconnected and highly-critical software-based systems - Agile. We are entering a period of reconsideration, reform, and regeneration in software, systems engineering and project management. Agile is working, Lean Software and System is working, and the combination is starting to prove very powerful with regard to throughput and workers.

The benefits of autonomous work, engagement and mastery are driving systemic improvements in our way of working and growing to meet complex challenges of our world. These results illuminate a future vision that has the potential to expand our current notions of Lean and Agile from software teams and into real organizational agility. As a result, there is a chance to unite and unify many communities under the guiding ideas of flow, pull, and value. All of these communities are being drawn in and starting to play well. These are beautiful days with all the implications to CMM/SEI, Agile, Scrum, Lean/LEI, and PMI/PMBok communities yet to be determined.

In the first half of this decade, look for collaborating across boundaries, seeing larger systems and groups working hard to create their future realities. Following that period, look for messy consolidation as the winners of this new platform emerge for a new golden age of networked, software product and system development. Together we'll be focused on the problem domain of global scale difficulties in governance, cyber-warfare, energy, water, communication, commerce, medicine, climate, transportation and nano-technology.

Here is what Jean Tabaka (Rally, Agile Fellow) has to say:

Let the System Talk

Thinking about our path with Lean, I’m compelled to draw upon research I’ve been doing in Systems Thinking and, more recently, what I’ve been learning in Systems Engineering.

In Systems Thinking, we recognize a world of system archetypes based on the dance of balancing loops, reinforcing loops and the outside agents that may cause them to transition. Lean, as a system of thinking, has certainly responded to systems that rely too much on take-make-waste. A set of negative reinforcing loops: the more you waste the less you have to take and make. Outside agents, the scarcity versus abundance of materials, has led us to Lean. Lean principles and practices create a positive system wherein the more we reduce waste the more value we get which in turn reinforces more waste reduction. It is a reinforcing loop propelled by continuous improvement.

Recently, I attended the Lean Software and Systems Consortium’s 2010 conference in Atlanta. What a revelation. From James Sutton’s talk on Lean Systems Engineering, I added new vocabulary that I think will become critical to Lean’s future.

Will Lean be our best source of practices and principles in the future? That depends on what will be guiding our systems:

• Scarcity
• Abundance
• Desperation
• Conformity

Once we have clarity about what guides our system, we can understand more about the system in which we are operating:

• Simple
• Complicated
• Complex
• Chaotic

Lean has steadfastly addressed pressures of scarcity and hence a system of complexity. That brings me to Dave Snowden’s work captured in Cynefin, a Welsh word he has used to describe a framework of problems, situations and behaviors in these four systems. For our world of complex systems, Lean provides the perfect high-level thinking for what we must embrace: emergent practices informed by, as Snowden puts it, “sense-making”

As we move into the next 10 years of Lean, I fervently believe that our sense-making must inform us about what supports emergence that responds to complexity. The practices will follow. For now, let us concentrate on the systems in which we operate, what outside agents or pressures are guiding our systems, and how we can best continue to formulate and hold dear the practices that will naturally emerge.