There is a division in the agile community about whether one should rely on people or focus on people supported by systemic thinking (no one I know of suggests systems alone are enough). This debate is often the people over process Vs. people and process (or as Don Reinertsen would say people times process). I've been in the agile community for some time and have seen some interesting things that I think shed some light on this debate. This long-time perspective has enabled me to see an interesting pattern.  read more »

Note: In reviewing this blog I do notice it sounds a little like an advertisement because I've described things from the perspective of what Net Objectives has done. However, I believe it is important to describe actual events and not theory. Most of what I write about comes from my own experience and the experience of other Net Objectives consultants. I describe what we have done to create the context for what we've learned. I am proud of our success and am merely trying to explain the tone.

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(This updates an entry originally posted April 21, 2007.)

From 2000 to 2004, I trained and coached teams in Scrum in a manner that was fairly consistent with what the Scrum Alliance said Scrum was. Beginning in 2004, I began to introduce Lean thinking into the mix. At first, I was mostly adding Lean insights into Scrum practices but over time, I began to let Lean thinking motivate and lead what I taught. It became clear to me that the ideas and attitudes of many of the thought leaders behind Scum were at odds with Lean thinking. Today, as I look at what iterative, time-boxed approach to software product develop should be, I can no longer label it as "Scrum." I don't do Scrum with Lean. I do something else - something I consider to be much more effective. 

This blog describes one of the biggest differences I have with many Scrum thought leaders: the proper role of management in Agile teams. Too many Scrum trainers/coaches/practitioners continue to dismiss the need for management in organizations using Scrum.  read more »

Some people in the Lean-Agile community think of me as an outspoken critic of Scrum.  That has never been my intention. My intention has always been to help people do software development effectively. I am not against Scrum, I am for something - effective software development at the entire organizational level. Since its inception, Net Objectives' vision has been effective software development without suffering.   Sometimes, however, when you are for some things, you have to speak up against other things - especially if  the two are opposed to each other.  I am not speaking against Scrum per se, I am speaking against claims made about Scrum that are hurting people.  read more »

In this blog I discuss the need to get to the root cause of why so many teams are not having success with Scrum.  Merely saying management is not removing impediments or labeling it "Scrum but" does not give much indications as to what or where the problems are. The question is "why does this happen and what can we do about it?" I will suggest one of Lean's problem solving tools - "5-whys" - may assist Scrum teams in moving forward.

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This is a variant of a post I recently made to the Lean-Agile user group. On the group there has been a lot of talk about the apparent disconnect or conflict between Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) and Lean-thinking.  read more »

The Intuitive Solution – Not Necessarily Correct

If there is one established measure of business success it is return on investment (ROI). ROI is the mantra of business. If you are a business executive and establish a high ROI for a sustained period of time – you are golden. ROI is easy to calculate – it is a measure of your profits (revenue-less expenses) divided by your expenses. ROI can therefore be achieved by increasing your revenue or decreasing your costs. Doing both has you walk on water.

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In our book, Lean-Agile Software Development: Achieving Enterprise and Team Agility, we mention that the "inspect and adapt" is not the same thing as Plan-Do-Check-Act. Yes, they sound the same, but they are manifestations of different causality models. To fully understand the differences in inspect and adapt and PDCA, we must look at these causality models (which we will do shortly).

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In May 2009, there were some discussions on the Kanban Dev group about types of processes.  The dialog that resulted is an important part of the Lean thought process and I thought it'd be useful to reproduce that here. 

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I am writing this blog to create a better context for my current blog series on Lean. As CEO of a company that helps other companies transition to becoming more effective in their software development efforts I am mostly interested in helping companies achieve enterprise agility.  read more »