lean

Articles

Important Retrospectives Why If I Could Do Only One Thing, It Would Be Retrospectives

Introducing a full agile framework can be daunting and cumbersome. Instead, try beginning with the method's core focus: continuous improvement. Retrospectives are the starting point of your agile journey and can help you solve the most immediate problems in your process, leading you down the road of process improvement.

Sune Lomholt's picture Sune Lomholt
Making Agile Leaner Making the Agile Extra Lean by Adopting New Practices

Prakash Pujar writes about his team's experience adopting some of the best agile practices to make their process extra lean and increase efficiency by increasing throughput—all without any change to the agile framework his team was following before and after. Here, he talks about some of the lean practices that worked for them.

Prakash Pujar's picture Prakash Pujar
Spiral of an Organization Avoiding the Organizational Death Spiral

The death spiral supersedes the death march in that the death march is a singular event, whereas the death spiral is systemic. It is the result of organizational dysfunction where teams march toward deadline after deadline without reflecting on or questioning if there is a better way to deliver software. There is! Take these positive steps.

Thomas Wessel's picture Thomas Wessel
Speaking to Your Business Using Measurements Speaking to Your Business Using Measurements

Justin Rohrman writes that measurement is one of the biggest problems he's experienced in test management. How do we measure quality, how do we know those measurements are good, and how do we use them to tell a story to executives? In this article, Justin explains how to speak to your business using measurements.

Justin Rohrman's picture Justin Rohrman
Planning During a Health Care Crisis Save Your Sanity: Planning During a Health Care Crisis

A health care crisis can hit without warning, leaving you both nursing the patient and mired in seemingly endless bureaucracy. In this article, Kathy Iberle shares with us her experience dealing with an elderly uncle who suffered a stroke and how agile methods, like using a visual planning board, can help one prepare and be ready when disaster strikes.

Kathy Iberle's picture Kathy Iberle
Celebrating Making the Most of Both Kanban and Lean Startup: Making the Most of Both

Alexei Zheglov reflects on his startup experience and David Anderson’s kanban method in light of Eric Ries’ lean startup movement. Making the most of both approaches requires understanding how they relate to each other.

Alexei Zheglov
Management Myth #1: The Myth of 100% Utilization

Too many managers believe in the myth of 100% utilization—the belief that every single technical person must be fully utilized every single minute of every single day. The problem with this myth is that there is no time for innovation, no time for serendipitous thinking, no time for exploration, and it often leads to a less successful organization.

Johanna Rothman's picture Johanna Rothman
A Productivity Comparison of Kanban and Scrum

Charles Suscheck compares the levels of productivity of Scrum and Kanban through a hands-on experiment that he and his team personally participated in. Learn the upsides and warnings about each practice to help you decide what might work best for you and your team on your next project.

Charles Suscheck's picture Charles Suscheck
Performance Factory for Agile and Lean Organizations

Implementing agile and lean performance appraisals presents some unique challenges. This article discusses how to do so in a way that helps to enhance the agile and lean practices that so clearly result in excellent team and organizational performance. The good news is that agile and lean performance management is much more effective than other methods.

Leslie  Sachs's picture Leslie Sachs
Becoming Lean: The Why, What, and How

This article presents a different way of looking at lean software development; one that is independent of lean’s manufacturing heritage. It begins by presenting lean as a collection of a body of knowledge applying lean principles to software development.

Al Shalloway's picture Al Shalloway

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