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Summary: Not just for Agile Development
Review: Although this book is from the Agile-series, the approach and advice extends to any methodology from the heavy (and still used) waterfall SDLC, to XP and agile methods.Key steps in this book will show you how to streamline your development methodology in accordance with lean thinking:
- Eliminate waste by cutting the fat out of processes, reducing rework, viewing your SDLC as a value stream.
- Amplify learning, with an emphasis on iterative planning, feedback loops and team communications.
- Decide as late as possible, which is enabled by concurrent activities, depth-first versus breadth-first problem solving, and other effective tools and techniques.
- Deliver as fast as possible, based on analogies between manufacturing pull systems and scheduling, and how to accomplish the same in development.
- Empower the team, which is a fundamental element of lean thinking. The tools and techniques presented in this section of the book are a mixture of common sense, leadership and management.
- Build integrity in. If ever there were a direct connection between the lean thinking approach to manufacturing and software development, it is here. Tools and techniques given include model-driven development, refactoring and testing techniques.
- See the whole, which emphasizes system thinking, metrics, optimization, and the supporting tools and techniques. Any or all of the above can be effectively applied to any SDLC or methodology and produce results. Lean thinking was developed by Toyota as a manufacturing paradigm, which has been extended through that company and is applied to business processes outside of the manufacturing domain. That this team of authors has applied it to software development is not as unnatural as it may seem at first glance given how vastly different software is to create versus cars, for example. But, the paradigm has been proven outside of manufacturing before this book was written, and the basic philosophy and principles can be applied - which this book evidences. If you want to look at development from an entirely unique perspective purge the words agile, XP and any other methodology from your mind while reading this book. I can almost guarantee that you'll find something in every chapter that you can put to immediate use in your own organization. As an aside, a book on software testing that is consistent with lean thinking in many ways, and closely aligned to the content of this book is "Software Testing Fundamentals: Methods and Metrics" ISBN 047143020X.
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Summary: Excellent book that teaches how to think agilely
Review: Books written during the first phase of agile software development have been about very specific practices we should employ. There are some excellent books on the Extreme Programming, Feature-Driven Development and Scrum agile processes. These books teach us "do a, b, and c if you want to do Extreme Programming" or "do x, y and z if you want to do Scrum." In the last year we've seen books by Highsmith (Agile Software Development Ecosystems) and Cockburn (Agile Software Development) that represent the second wave of agile software development-that of learning to think agilely rather than following a prescribed set of agile rules. Mary and Tom Poppendieck's book is the latest and best book for teaching how to think agilely. The book contains 22 "thinking tools." The thinking tools are drawn from the world of lean manufacturing where they have helped improve product delivery speed, quality and cost. Each tool is presented as a guideline. Each thinking tool is described with enough detail that you can put it into practice; but, more importantly, the reasons supporting each are made explicit. So, instead of simply reading that it is good to "deliver as fast as possible" we learn how rapid delivery is supported by pull systems (where work is pulled into the current step from the prior step), how queuing theory helps us identify bottlenecks, and how to calculate the cost of delay (to see which bottlenecks are worth removing). This book is the perfect blend of highly actionable instructions and descriptions of why those actions work. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wishes to improve his or her software development process. The authors' ideas are applicable both to projects using agile approaches today and to more traditional, plan-driven projects.
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Summary: REQUIRED READING for anyone interested in agile development
Review: I gave this book five stars becase that is the maximum I am allowed to give it, otherwise I would have rated it higher. I think this book should be REQUIRED READING for anyone interested in agile software development methods, or even just general software process improvement. This book contains the kind of practical thinking and analytical tools about agility that I was starved for when the first book on agile development methods first hit the software development scene. The early books on XP said what XP was and described its values and practices. But when wanting answers to the questions about why a particular practice works, where its strengths are, where its gaps are, and how they are/arent addressed by other practices, I was left wanting (particularly since a lot of folks wanting to adopt agile "in bits and pieces" perceived the need to do so incrementally and needed to understand where to begin, which core things to start with, how to adjust and adapt them to ones environment, and what to look for). This book filled that void for me, showing me how to think about agile "systems" from a systems-thinking perspective, and how to analyze existing processes (agile or otherwise) to identify their "hot spots" and apply 22 practical tools to get on the road to lean/agility, (in an evolutionary fashion) without mandating instantaneous revolutionary organizational change to replace the entire process all at once.
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Summary: Awesome book!
Review: I had pretty much the same feeling reading this book and Lean Thinking, as I did when I first started reading up on agile methods. It all felt like common sense and that's a comment I hear from a lot of people new to lean/agile. However, I feel, and have experienced, that there is a huge gap between viewing or perceiving something as common sense and actually applying that common sense to the work you are doing. Also, both this book and Lean Thinking put these principles and practices into a different perspective by showing how they have worked in the manufacturing business. Seeing the parallels between the work done in manufacturing a bicycle and crafting a software program is pretty powerful. Mary and Tom do a great job in the book of presenting specific tools for applying all this "common sense". They start by introducing the seven principles of lean thinking when applied to software development: 1. Eliminate waste
2. Amplify learning
3. Decide as late as possible
4. Deliver as fast as possible
5. Empower the team
6. Build integrity in
7. See the whole The rest of the book presents the 22 thinking tools that are all tied to the seven principles. Mary and Tom use a lot of real world examples of the usage of these tools and they do a very good job of explaining how each of them could fit into an agile ecosystem. The book is pretty compact and the authors have clearly eliminated all waste from it because I was never bored. I can't recommend it enough!
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Summary: Elegantly explains WHY and HOW lean works in software
Review: If you already understand or use agile software development approaches such as XP or Scrum then this book will teach you WHY they work. It's beautifully written too.
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Summary: Elegantly explains WHY and HOW lean works in software
Review: If you already understand or use agile software development approaches such as XP or Scrum then this book will teach you WHY they work. It's beautifully written too.
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Summary: An excellent book on applying agile to your process
Review: If you are intrigued by the concepts of Agile, this is an excellent book to help you begin to map Agile methodologies and techniques into your team's software development process. Mary and Tom Poppendieck present 22 tools in 7 categories to help you begin to map Agile methodologies and techniques into your team's software development process. Mary and Tom Poppendieck are experts in getting software done. They've taken a number of the most important Agile techniques from Lean Manufacturing techniques, and shown how they relate to lean/agile software development. They do not pontificate on Agile. Essentially, they extract a number of the most critical concepts, examine them, and then help you to see how you might bring them into your own software development process and team. This is not a cookie cutter approach: One of my issues with the leaders of movements like SCRUM and XP is that they believe that you should be using their techniques verbatim -- I once heard one of them say "You're either doing XP exactly, or you're NOT agile!" This is not the case here. After a strong introduction, this husband and wife team launch into it. Like their in-person seminars, it's clear that they've been there -- they know what works, and what doesn't. These authors have developed a lot of solid software, built teams of developers, and delivered high quality code on tight deadlines. There's no fluff here -- at less than 190 pages, they don't have room for it. The first four chapters focus on modifying your process: making it lean, creating feedback loops, encouraging flexibility, and delivering fast. The next one focuses on development teams -- empowerment, motivation, and leadership. The final two are about coding: building integrity into your code and creating code that matches the entire system that is being built. There's also a fascinating chapter on creating contracts appropriate to the Agile model, which is definitely required reading, and is a rarely discussed topic in the Agile literature. If you are intrigued by the concepts of Agile, this is an excellent book to help you begin to map Agile methodologies and techniques into your team's software development process. With its pragmatic approach, informative examples, and succinct and clear writing, this is an excellent book to get you thinking about how to apply the powerful concepts of agile to your development process.
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Summary: An eye-opener for executives
Review: Lean Software Development suggests that agile methods are not unique to software development. In fact, their values and concerns are at the core of Toyota's production and product development process, which has FOUR TIMES the productivity of their competitors.
Changing mindsets is not an easy task. The "agile" movement in development methods is a call-to-arms to do just that: sloughing off practices that do not work anymore, or never worked in the first place, and adopting those practices that do work. At the heart of it all, these practices recognize that product development is a knowledge-driven process, not a task-driven process.
However, it is very hard for non-technical managers to understand this. The lack of enforced discipline seems like agile may only be a justification for poor "code and fix" practices used by lazy managers and teams.
But in reality, Lean Development is all about eliminating waste and providing value. I highly suggest it as a tool in your arsenal to change the mindset of this industry. Also highly suggested is one of Mary Poppendieck's recommendations, "Product Development for the Lean Enterprise", which explains Toyota's PD process in more detail, along with "Software by Numbers", which provides a financial model to justify agile projects.
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Summary: Get the information elsewhere
Review: The authors attempt to apply lean manufacturing principles and techniques to software development. Despite repeatedly warning the reader that manufacturing is different than software development, most of the examples are not from software development. Some examples were mildly interesting, but they just didn't apply. This had the weird effect of casting doubt on the whole concept they were trying to exemplify. The effort seemed forced, and the focus on manufacturing detracted from providing a clear and practical guide to software development. The authors present some relevant tools (delaying decisions, eliminating waste, etc.) but these are not new and are presented in a more accessible format in other books. Some of the tools just did not register. Value Stream Mapping, for instance, showed delays were usually instigated by the customer, and we all serve at the pleasure of the customer. Queueing Theory is a long-winded and confusing way of saying what we already know from other agile exponents - that small batches are better. Despite the slimness (under 200 pages), it seemed like a lot of reading for very little information. Still, I have to give at least two stars for any book that is aligned with agile practices.
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Summary: Practical Tools For Lean Software
Review: The authors have done a wonderful job in helping us to look for ways to improve toward "Lean Software Development". One of the great things about this book is the approach that it takes. Rather than giving a prescription of "do this, and you should get these results", they give a framework for thinking through the issues and making good decisions. Each chapter concludes with a section called "Try This". My organization has already benefited from the suggestions for identifying waste. Again, they don't tell you what waste to eliminate, but rather how to go about looking for wasteful items. Another thing that the authors have cleared up is the improper distinction between principles and practices. The authors claim that many of the problems in software today come from the fact that manufacturing *practices* have been applied to software development rather than manufacturing *principles*. The principles that are explained throughout the book are based on successful companies outside of the software business, e.g. 3M and Toyota, and how in turn these can be applied to software. One of the best points that they authors make - and they make many good ones - is that local optimization within an organization can actually slow down the overall process. The overall tone of the book is very pragmatic, and it is definitely going to be a shock to the system for anyone who is accustomed to CMMI or ISO certifications. However, the potential results from this shift in thinking are worth it.
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