Dean Leffingwell has a great post up with the above title. His approach and conclusions fit well with my Laws of Development. I realize I’ve never summarized them on this blog, so I will do that in the future. In the mean time, here’s a summary from Dean’s great work which is very practical: He …
Continue reading "Ten Practices for Applying Lean Agile to Other Knowledge Work"
David Anderson at Agile Management has two new blog posts that got me thinking. The first is How to Start with Kanban which lays out how to implement Kanban for software development in 10 easy steps (I like its simplicity.) The second is Blogosphere Buzz about Lean & Kanban which is a comprehensive review of …
I was recently reviewing a presentation from David Anderson on Kanban from Agile 2007. I love some of his ideas on sizing work, especially in separating work in process (WIP/story point) management from the release cycle. He summarizes his approach in 4 bullet points for success: Focus on Quality (fourth law of development) Reduce or …
This post continues the Laws of Development Physics as related to people elements that impact development.
"...when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in thought advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be." - Lord Kelvin "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All …
To follow up on the fourth law, I add as reinforcement the fifth law of development physics: If you cannot pay for variability reduction, you will pay in one or more of the following ways: Long iteration times and high story points in progress Wasted capacity or need for more resources Slower burn down rates …
Variability is the root of all evil in development and must be eliminated.
Stories are the raw materials of development. They should stay in a raw form until needed. Or, as stated by the third “law of development physics”: The value of requirements increases as its production release becomes imminent. Or, you know what you need when you see it, until then, make up a good story.
In my post, What’s so Wrong with Pushing, I showed by analogy how Time Blocked Iterations, Story Points and Burn Down Rate enabled a superior pull mechanism over traditional management for development teams. In this post, I’ll develop how to maximize results from that pull system. There are three, sometimes opposing objectives in maximizing the …
Is the cost of software defects driven more by time than the stage of its discovery?
Horizon Line Group 