Wednesday, April 22, 2009

L&K2009: David Anderson Key Note

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

L&K2009: Alan Shalloway Key Note

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

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Spouse Program at Lean & Kanban 2009

[* updated April 22nd] Janice Linden-Reed has been working hard with the staff at the Mandarin Oriental in Miami to put together a spouse/partner/significant other tourist program for our Lean & Kanban 2009 conference. Speakers and attendees arriving early in Miami are encouraged to join the early week events. Naturally, the content at the conference is so good you won’t want to be anywhere other than the Mandarin Oriental on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday . Check out the PDF of the program. Janice has also been arranging some special rates with the top rated spa facilities in the hotel. Drop me an email if you are interested. Technorati tag: David+Anderson, Agile+Management, Agile, Lean, Kanban

Lean & Kanban Early Bird End April 13th

The Early Bird Pricing for Lean & Kanban 2009 end on Easter Monday so sign up today, http://www.leankanbanconference.com We’ve got some speaker changes. Jean Tabaka and Alina Hsu will be joining us on Lean Day May 6th to replace Aaron Sanders and me. I’ll be rolling my talk on risk management into my key note on Kanban Day May 7th. The room block at the hotel and the guaranteed rate closes April 13th. So sign up now and book your hotel before the offer ends. Technorati tag: David+Anderson, Agile+Management, Agile, Lean, kanban

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Bob Lewis Unimpressed with Lean Software Development

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