Lean & Kanban

Articles

Making Agile Leaner Making the Agile Extra Lean by Adopting New Practices

Prakash Pujar writes about his team's experience adopting some of the best agile practices to make their process extra lean and increase efficiency by increasing throughput—all without any change to the agile framework his team was following before and after. Here, he talks about some of the lean practices that worked for them.

Prakash Pujar's picture Prakash Pujar
Spiral of an Organization Avoiding the Organizational Death Spiral

The death spiral supersedes the death march in that the death march is a singular event, whereas the death spiral is systemic. It is the result of organizational dysfunction where teams march toward deadline after deadline without reflecting on or questioning if there is a better way to deliver software. There is! Take these positive steps.

Thomas Wessel's picture Thomas Wessel
Speaking to Your Business Using Measurements Speaking to Your Business Using Measurements

Justin Rohrman writes that measurement is one of the biggest problems he's experienced in test management. How do we measure quality, how do we know those measurements are good, and how do we use them to tell a story to executives? In this article, Justin explains how to speak to your business using measurements.

Justin Rohrman's picture Justin Rohrman
Planning During a Health Care Crisis Save Your Sanity: Planning During a Health Care Crisis

A health care crisis can hit without warning, leaving you both nursing the patient and mired in seemingly endless bureaucracy. In this article, Kathy Iberle shares with us her experience dealing with an elderly uncle who suffered a stroke and how agile methods, like using a visual planning board, can help one prepare and be ready when disaster strikes.

Kathy Iberle's picture Kathy Iberle
Top Twelve Myths of Agile Development

When it comes to agile development, Allan Kelly has noticed a lot of misinformation is being passed off as fact. In this article, Allan takes a closer look at twelve of the most common agile myths he has encountered while training new agile teams.

Allan Kelly's picture Allan Kelly
Visualizing All the Work in Your Project Portfolio

Regarding project portfolios, it can be a big problem for clients to see all the work. Some clients have multiple kinds of projects, so they want to show their work in a variety of ways. Johanna Rothman describes some helpful ways to display the work being done.

Johanna Rothman's picture Johanna Rothman
Celebrating Making the Most of Both Kanban and Lean Startup: Making the Most of Both

Alexei Zheglov reflects on his startup experience and David Anderson’s kanban method in light of Eric Ries’ lean startup movement. Making the most of both approaches requires understanding how they relate to each other.

Alexei Zheglov
Agile Lifecycles for Geographically Distributed Teams: A Case Study

In this case study of a distributed agile team, the developers were in Cambridge, MA, the product owners were in San Francisco, the testers were in Bangalore, and the project manager was always flying somewhere, because the project manager was shared among several projects. The developers knew about timeboxed iterations, so they used timeboxes. Senior management had made the decision to fire all the local testers and buy cheaper tester time over the developers’ objections and move the testing to Bangalore.

Johanna Rothman's picture Johanna Rothman
Agile Lifecycles for Geographically Distributed Teams: Using a Project Manager with Kanban, Silo'd Teams

This is a product development organization with developers in Italy, testers in India, more developers in New York, product owners and project managers in California.

This organization first tried iterations, but the team could never get to done. The problem was that the stories were too large. Normally I suggest smaller iterations, but one of the developers suggested they move to kanban.

Johanna Rothman's picture Johanna Rothman
Management Myth #1: The Myth of 100% Utilization

Too many managers believe in the myth of 100% utilization—the belief that every single technical person must be fully utilized every single minute of every single day. The problem with this myth is that there is no time for innovation, no time for serendipitous thinking, no time for exploration, and it often leads to a less successful organization.

Johanna Rothman's picture Johanna Rothman

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