Adventures In Lean

In the last six months, my team has undergone some very radical changes and has turned into a full blown Agile team. I’m very happy with our success and I consider this team to be the shining example in our company, at the moment.

Now, in keeping with the tradition of this team in changing at least one thing every few weeks, we are about to embark on a new journey in our project management processes: Lean Software Development.

Starting at 1pm, Central Time, today, my team will be kicking off the following processes:

• Kanban
• Release Per Feature
• Just In Time Retrospectives

I am going to be posting a series of entries on each of these specific items over the next few weeks, and will most likely keep this post updated as the index of entries for a while. So stay tuned for a whirlwind of opinionated posts on our next great experiment!

Table Of Contents For Adventures In Lean

Here are the articles that I have written or am writing for my Adventures In Lean series:

Kanban

1. Kanban – Pulling Value From The Supplier – In this post, I am laying the foundation of what Kanban is along with a couple of other important terms that I will be using throughout the series. Kanban is only one of many tools, techniques and philosophies found in lean, though. Trying to sell kanban as lean would be like selling a steering wheel as an entire car – you’re only getting part of what you really need.
2. Kanban in Software Development
   1. Part 1: Introducing Kanban Boards and Pipelines
   2. Part 2: Completing the Kanban Board with Queues, Order Points and Limits
   3. Part 2.5: A Variation on Queues – Pipelines for WIP and Done
   4. Part 3: Andon and Jidoka – Handling Bugs and Emergency Fixes in Kanban
3. Our Kanban Board and Process 
4. Release Per Feature – Delivering Value As Soon As Possible
5. Just In Time Retrospectives – Fixing Problems As Problems Occur

There are likely to be other articles added to this list as well. Please check back now and then to see what has been added!