I've joined a bunch of my old friends who work for Borland to blog about Agile Transformation at enterprise scale. I have long ties with Borland through my connection to Peter Coad and Togethersoft. I'm delighted to be blogging with my old buddy from Singapore, Stephen Palmer (the Dev team manager on the original FDD project, co-author of A Practical Guide to Feature Driven Development, and guru at color modeling).

My first post is titled Agile Transition Initiatives : Just Say No! And is the first in a series where I'll be talking about organizational maturity and capability along with the notion of a kaizen (continuous improvement) culture of innovation facilitated from the top, but led from the bottom.

These days Borland is a very different business to the old developer tools IDE business that they spun off as Code Gear. A few years ago they acquired Terraquest, a firm run by ex-SEI and CMM expert Bill Curtis. We became friends while I was working on MSF for CMMI Process Improvement at Microsoft. Bill provided me with guidance on CMMI Level 4 metrics and we talked a lot about Deming and whether "common cause systems" approach could be applied to knowledge work problems like software development.

Meanwhile, as Borland has evolved these past few years, their interests and mine have converged - on Enterprise Scale Agile Tranformation. It turns out that the folks there share my opinion that organizational maturity is a vital part of the mix to institutionalizing Agile development at scale and to creating an _agile_ business. While I've been advocating Agile+CMMI they've quietly been building traction around their own maturity model concept. I'll be contributing 3 or 4 blog posts per quarter specifically focused on large scale Agile adoption and business agility over at the Agile Transformation Forum. Check it out! There is some really great community content there with some true experts writing it. Technorati tag: David+Anderson, Agile+Management, Agile, Borland, CMMI, Stephen+Palmer, Peter+Coad, Bill+Curtis 

Now that the Dear John letters have gone out to the unsuccessful submissions for Agile 2009 in Chicago, I'm expecting a surge of last minute registrations for Lean & Kanban 2009 even though there are less than 2 weeks to go until the event in Miami. Why?

Well Agile 2009 was inundated with submissions, typically 6 times more submissions per stage than there was room to accept. Many Lean and Kanban sessions have been rejected, for example, Karl Scotland's KFC (Kanban, Flow and Cadence) submission to the Coaching stage. Some potential speakers at the event would only be granted permission to attend if they got a speaking slot. With a rejection in hand they now know that attending in Chicago is unlikely.

Meanwhile, there is an audience that really cares about Lean and Kanban. Even though the program isn't published, the word is getting out. People are beginning to realize that there will be more and better Lean and Kanban content at the Lean & Kanban 2009 conference than the Agile 2009 conference. The economy of scale argument that suggests Agile is better value doesn't hold up for these people. Attending Lean & Kanban 2009 will cost approximately half what it will cost to attend Agile 2009 as an attendee.

I've already been contacted by one rejected Agile 2009 submitter who now realizes that her interests lie in Lean and Kanban and she wants to make a last minute switch and come to Miami. I've also seen a small boost in registration this morning.

Meanwhile, if you do want to come along, the hotel is honoring the group booking rate even though our room block is now sold out. Registration for the full event is only $800 and a single day is available for as little as $295. So don't miss out. Don't miss _the_ best Lean software development conference to be held in 2009. Register now and make your travel plans to be in Miami for May 6th-8th! Technorati tag: David+Anderson, Agile+Management, Agile, Lean, Kanban

At the Lean & Kanban 2009 Conference in Miami May 6-8. Corey Ladas will present his Scrumban approach to evolving Agile teams . Corey will be presenting on May 6th Lean Day at the conference.

Scrumban: Lean Thinking for Agile Process Evolution

The popularity of the Scrum method of Agile project management is largely due to its ease of adoption. In Lean terms, Scrum organizes product development resources into workcells and imposes constraints on batch transfers of work requests, while leaving other concerns to complementary methods. The Scrumban method builds on these simple Scrum practices in order to introduce pull, flow, standard work, throughput metrics, and continuous improvement to the Scrum framework, while also reducing the overhead associated with planning batch transfers. Scrumban aims to reduce cycle time for new feature development, and establish a kernel of flow which can expand along the length of the product development value stream. Scrumban breaks its practices into a sequence of evolutionary enhancements, so that teams can improve their processes according to their needs and capability. Scrumban allows new teams to start with Scrum as a simple starting point for Lean development, or it allows existing Agile teams to improve their processes by making Lean methods more easily available.

Bio

Corey Ladas has been an enthusiastic student of software engineering methodology since the early 1990's. Encouraged by the cross-disciplinary advancements of the Design Patterns movement and the eclectic approach of Steve McConnell's Rapid Development, Corey went off in search of unconventional inspiration from the worlds of systems engineering, industrial engineering, and product development. Lean Thinking is one of Corey's favorite discoveries from that process, and he has been experimenting with Lean methods in software development since the early 2000's. Corey edits a popular Lean software development blog http://www.LeanSoftwareEngineering.com, and provides consulting and coaching services through http://www.ModusCooperandi.com. Technorati tag: David+Anderson, Agile+Management, Agile, Lean, kanban, Corey Ladas

I'm been remiss highlighting content at the Lean & Kanban 2009 Conference in Miami May 6-8. So I'm working my way through the program this time with James Sutton, co-author of Lean Software Strategies. James is from Lockhead-Martina and will be presenting on May 6th Lean Day at the conference.

Let Lean be Lean, Agile be Agile, and Ever the Twain shall Meet

Software is the last large industry to explore Lean Production. To date, most of our Lean experiments have been based on some form of Agile Development. Agile is a great improvement over traditional approaches for many domains. Applying Lean ideas to Agile practices has proven helpful to both technique and theory.

Nevertheless, applying Lean to Agile carries us only so far. Cognitive psychology says our brains filter out anything that falls outside our current mental models of reality. In other words, we miss seeing things rushing by our car window, if we put on colored glasses before taking the first look outside. Unsurprisingly, Lean seen through Agile-shaded lenses looks remarkably like…Agile. Might we see some new things if we grasped our mental models by their rims, lifted them off our faces, and took a fresh look? Large productivity and quality gains on Lean projects where Agile has been ruled out by external factors (e.g., large safety-critical/military) confirm the answer is “yes.”

In this talk we will first look at what the five Lean principles mean in Software. Then we will briefly discuss how combining Lean and Agile can yield a kind of “hybrid vigor” stronger than either alone.

Bio

James Sutton applies systems-engineering and Lean methods with a business sensibility to software systems development. This has consistently improved productivity and quality by several hundred percent on projects ranging from a few million U.S. dollars to over a billion. In 2007 his book with Peter Middleton, "Lean Software Strategies," explained this approach and won the Shingo Prize, which Business Week Magazine calls "the Nobel Prize of Manufacturing." James is a Principal Systems Engineer at Lockheed-Martin Aeronautics Company, and holds the Certified Professional Systems Engineer (CSEP) certification with the INCOSE (International Council On Systems Engineering) organization, along with certifications in Lean, QFD, TRIZ, and negotiation. He is also a keynote speaker (AdaUK London and Lean-Agile Paris in early 2009), and has spoken and published for numerous other conferences. Technorati tag: David+Anderson, Agile+Management, Agile, Lean, kanban, James+Sutton

I will give the opening Kanban day keynote at Lean & Kanban 2009 in Miami on May 7th. Register now for the whole event. It great value at only $800 for two and a half days of exposure to the best talent using Lean and Kanban in software development, or for register for a single day only. The one day Lean event May 6th is $335 and the one day Kanban event on May 7th is only $295.

I've been thinking of retitling this talk "Forget the Japanese words! Focus on risk management & cultural change!" But for now this is what I published. The final talk will definitely touch on these points.

What's Next in the Agile Word: The Need for Lean

The motivation and use of kanban in software engineering is often being misunderstood. It isn’t a prescriptive method or process template. Kanban offers us a set of guidelines and principles for implementing a pull system. When followed appropriately these principles will lead every kanban process implementation to different and uniquely tailored to its environment, value stream and risk profile of the work being undertaken. Kanban offers us a new way to think about change within software development organizations. It offers an incremental approach to change. Kanban allows us to implement my Recipe for Success: focus on quality; reduce work-in-progress and release often; balance demand against throughput; and prioritize. It also offers us a visual and transparent mechanism to see opportunities for improvement and change: bottlenecks; waste; and variability.

Bio

David Anderson is a thought leader in the software engineering management field. He was an early advocate of agile methods. His first book, Agile Management for Software Engineering focused on enterprise scale issues of managing teams in large organizations, and was published by Prentice Hall in 2003. David is regarded as the father of use of kanban in software development and project management. He's been infusing Lean ideas into his work since 2002. David is also well respected in the formal and academic software engineering field and recently co-authored a Technical Note from the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University titled CMMI and Agile: Why not embrace both! Technorati tag: David+Anderson, Agile+Management, Agile, Lean, kanban

Alan Shalloway will give the opening final keynote at Lean & Kanban 2009 in Miami on May 86th. Register now for the whole event. It great value at only $800 for two and a half days of exposure to the best talent using Lean and Kanban in software development, or for register for a single day only. The one day Lean event May 6th is $335 and the one day Kanban event on May 7th is only $295.

What's Next in the Agile Word: The Need for Lean

Alan Shalloway will discuss what looks to be next on the horizon. While Scrum continues to be the most popular of the Agile methods, it appears to have reached the limits of its capabilities as companies attempt to adopt it in both larger and more diverse development efforts. Hear Alan discuss why a new paradigm of Agile, within the context of Lean-Thinking is necessary for the industry to adopt Agile methods in larger and more complex development projects in order to achieve Enterprise Agility.

Achieving Enterprise Agility requires an organization to:

• Have an effective product portfolio management team
• Have effective teams using either iterative or Kanban methods to build the selected product enhancements
• Have proper use of acceptance test-driven development to ensure the right code is being built the right way

Alan will also discuss different transitions paths available to companies attempting to become Lean-Agile Enterprise.

Bio

Alan Shalloway is the founder and CEO of Net Objectives, Inc. With almost 40 years of experience, Alan is an industry thought leader, trainer, and coach in the areas of Lean Software Development, The Lean-Agile Connection and using Design Patterns in agile environments. He is a popular speaker at prestigious conferences worldwide and the primary author of Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design. His firm provides fully integrated Lean-Agile training, consulting and coaching solutions for business, management, teams, and individuals as well as a complete set of technical training to support these services. Technorati tag: David+Anderson, Agile+Management, Agile, Lean, kanban, Alan+Shalloway

It's unusual for me to find myself at odds with Bob Lewis. I find him a voice of reason and practical experience. And as one of the few others who writes about IT management, he is a kindred spirit. However, recently Bob has been on an anti-Mary Poppendieck track with his Leery of LSD and Who is LSD Good For posts.

Bob has a point. The point is that Mary's material just doesn't go far enough nor is it based on enough empirical experience. It's too full of examples from other industries and thought experiments on how to analgously map those ideas to software development. Bob smells something and it isn't pleasant. So he's calling us on it.

The pity is that Bob hasn't researched who else is doing good work with Lean Software Development or taken a look at a wider range of advice. Nor has he realized that there are quite a few of us who don't take our lead from Mary Poppendieck - me, Peter Middleton, James Sutton, David Raffo, Bob Stoddard, Corey Ladas, Karl Scotland to name just a few. Notably these are all folks who'll be speaking at Lean & Kanban 2009.

So Bob, here is an open invitation... Come'on down to Miami and join us and learn what Lean Software Development is really all about. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. :-) Technorati tag: David+Anderson, Agile+Management, Agile, Lean, kanban, Software+Engineering, Project+Management, Bob+Lewis, IS+Survivor, Mary+Poppendieck

Israel Gat (Agile Executive) posted his thoughts on my Kanban & Retrospectives blog and made some comparisons with Scrum.

Israel Gat also posted his thoughts on Continuous Deployment (or Customer Driven Testing) following an interesting Twitter discussion mainly between James Shore and me. What's interesting about this one is the consideration that even if the technical team is capable of continuous deployment it is undesirable if the end customer is incapable of absorbing such frequent releases or the economic cost to that customer is unacceptable.

And Dave Nicolette's been in on the action too, explaining how Kanban is an Agile method. This post from Dave was prompted by my Kanban & Planning and Estimation post to which he posted a comment.

And Eric Willeke spotted this blog with lots of Kanban posts... WingingIT  Technorati tag: David+Anderson, Agile+Management, Agile, Lean, kanban, Software+Engineering, Project+Management, Israel+Gat, Dave+Nicolette