Dzone just published my Lean article ‘We’re not Japanese and we don’t build cars’. Please take a look and give me your comments. Have a great Christmas and New Year everyone!….

…XP from the bottom.
It’s been an age since I’ve posted. I’ve been distracted by a hectic few months of work, a big chunk of leave and the new Led Zeppelin biography (which is awesome!). From now on I should be getting back into my regular posting pattern of at least a post a week.
I thought […]

Most organisations that I come across that introduce Agile techniques focus on a set of tools and practices that are applied at a working level only - test driven development, continuous integration, stand-ups, user stories etc. Even the best organisations that I get to work with only focus on the next level up and start […]

I’m currently lucky enough to be on the road delivering Lean presentations to industry in a number of our key cities (Hong Kong, Beijing, London, Manchester, New York, Chicago, San Francisco - details on the ThoughtWorks website). I’ll write more about the presentations and the people I’m meeting soon - I want to talk about […]

About Kent :: Kent Beck is the creator of eXtreme Programming and author of Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change. Kent was also one of the original signatories of the Agile Manifesto in 2001 and is the founder and director of Three Rivers Institute (TRI).
Q. What influence, if any, did the Lean revolution taking place in […]

A3 reports have been a favourite Lean tool of mine for a long time. The idea is a simple one… All reports should be presented on a single side of a single piece of A3 paper. The philosophy is that ‘less is more’, all the information required should be concise, anything else is just fluff.
Toyota […]

About Mary Poppendieck:: Mary is a former programmer and IT manager turned Lean Software Development Evangelist, Author and Trainer. Mary, with her husband Tom, is the author of the award winning books Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit and Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash.
Q. What does the term […]

For some background information check out my previous posts on Push Systems and Pull Systems.
In both the business operations and software development worlds it is often desirable to transition from push processes to pull processes; pull processes better support concepts like just-in-time and have long since been proved superior in most contexts within the business […]

I’ve added a reading list to the site accessible through the main navigation in the top bar. The list isn’t intended to be a comprehensive list of all things Agile and Lean. Instead I’ve tried to capture what I think are the most valuable books around on the topics covered in this site. Here’s a […]

I’m going to take a break from looking at Lean process principles and talk about a really practical application I’ve found of one of the tools used by Toyota. Let’s apply the 5S to IT strategy and in particular a strategic view of application portfolio management.
The 5S
The 5S are five terms beginning with ‘S’ that […]