Poppendieck Mary.Poppendieck Tom. - Lean software development: an agile toolkit

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An Agile Toolkit

Mary Poppendieck
Tom Poppendieck

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Copyright 2003 by Addison-Wesley

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior consent of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America. Published simultaneously in Canada.

ISBN 0-321-15078-3
Text printed in the United States on recycled paper at RR Donnelley in Crawfordsville, Indiana. Seventeenth printing, May 2013

To Dustin, Andy and Brian, Karen and Becca

BY JIM HIGHSMITH

In February 2001, when Agile was adopted as the umbrella word for methodologies such as Extreme Programming, Crystal, Adaptive Software Development, Scrum, and others, the industrial heritage of agile buzzed around in the background. Womack, Jones, and Rooss The Machine That Changed the World, Smith and Reinertsens Developing Products in Half the Time, and Womack and Joness Lean Thinking have resided on my bookshelf for years. The Agility Forum was founded by manufacturers in the early 1990s. The extensive literature on agile and lean industrial product development influenced my work on Adaptive Software Development.

But in Lean Software Development, Mary and Tom Poppendieck take lean industrial practices to a new levelthey tell us how to apply them directly to software development. It is one thing to read about value stream mapping in a manufacturing plant but quite another to see how this idea applies to software development processes. It is one thing to read about Toyotas set-based decision making and another to apply those ideas to software design. Marys manufacturing and industrial product development experience at 3M gives her insight into how these practices actually work, and her and Toms information technology backgrounds gives them insight into how to apply the practices to software development.

Although Agile Software Development has roots that go back more than 10 years, as a movement it is only a couple of years old (in early 2003). Tying it to lean and agile industrial product development provides additional credibility to the principles and practices of Agile Software Development, but more importantly, it provides a wealth of ideas that can strengthen agile practices.

For example, the set-based decision making previously mentioned counters prevalent ideas about making design decisions. Traditional engineering (software and others) stresses analysis and early decision making so downstream activities can proceed. Set-based development stresses keeping multiple design options open in order to have as much information as possible, not only about a particular piece of the design, but also about the integration of all pieces. Set-based development helps optimize the whole rather than the pieces. Simple design and refactoring serve similar purposes for software developerspushing off certain design decisions into the future when more information is available. Set-based development therefore provides a parallel that adds credibility to agile practices but also shows how to extend those practices.

Lean Software Development provides a wealth of information about applying lean techniques from an industrial setting to software development. In particular, it presents a toolkit for project managers, team leaders, and technology managers who want to add value rather than become roadblocks to their project teams.

Jim Highsmith
Flagstaff, Arizona
March 2002

BY KEN SCHWABER

Agile processes for software development came into being during the 1990s. We constructed them based on experience, trial-and-error, knowledge of what didnt work, and best practices. I had used Scrum and Extreme Programming-like practices in my own software company during the early 90s. When I first formulated the detailed practices of Scrum, I made sure that I tried them on every sort of development situation imaginable before I published my first book about Scrum. In the absence of first-principles or a theoretical framework for Scrum and other agile processes, I wanted to make sure it really worked before I unleashed more snake oil on the world.

Others and I have made attempts to provide a theoretical underpinning to agile processes. Ive referred back to my research in industrial process control theory, which friends of mine at DuPonts Advanced Research Facility helped me understand and apply. Jim Highsmith has referred to the principles of complex adaptive systems and complexity theory to explain, by analogy, the reasons why agile processes work.

Mary and Tom Poppendieck have provided us with a more understandable, robust, and everyday framework for understanding the workings of agile processes. I was with them at the XP2002 conference in Sardinia, Italy when Enrico Zaninotto, Dean of Faculty of Economics at the University of Trento, Italy gave his keynote talk, From X Programming to the X Organization. In this talk, Enrico laid out the migration of manufacturing from the simple workshop through the assembly line to the modern use of lean manufacturing. He clearly demonstrated the economic imperatives underlying the current use of lean manufacturing. After the talk, Mary was obviously pleased at this validation. Enricos talk brought together her background in manufacturing and product development with all of the collaborative work she had done with the lean construction movement and her knowledge of the Toyota production system.