Although many companies may have heard that the concepts of lean production would be of use to their organization, they do not see how something that sprang from manufacturing practices could apply to software development. This article presents a different way of looking at Lean Software Development—one that is independent of Lean’s manufacturing heritage.

Karl Scotland explains that viewing kanban as a systemic approach leads to systems thinking. Systems can be thought of as being made up of elements, which interact to meet a purpose. They are more than the sum of the parts, and the system’s purpose is crucial in determining the system’s behavior.

In October this year Codeworks DEV received the 2010 Agile Award for the “Best Use of Agile in the Public Sector”. The use of Agile Methods within large, publically accountable environments has long represented a challenge to the Agile community. Agility is more often associated with small to medium size enterprises (SME’s) in the private sector, where organisations are incentivised to keep pace with a changing business environment. Public sector companies and larger corporates, on the other hand, are renowned for their essentially prescriptive, “non-agile” attempts at long-term planning using techniques such as PRINCE2.

My team is in the middle of one of the hardest projects—we call them "themes"—we’ve ever tackled. We’re a high-functioning agile team that has helped our company grow and succeed over several years now—we “went agile” in 2003. Here’s one thing I know for sure: No matter how many problems you solve, new challenges will pop up.