Recently, I gave a presentation on Flow at Agile Executives. It was a fun meeting and a fun topic and lead to several realizations on my part. First, when Alistair Cockburn is in the audience, I get a bit nervous. Second, Lean and Agile aren’t incompatible, they’re complimentary. Let me explain.
The Sterility of Lean
Lean tends to think of people as nothing more than metrics. Cogs in the grand scheme of things. Little focus is placed on the human aspect of software development when talking about lean. My opinion is that lean is structured that way because lean is typically looking at widgets flowing through a system of machines to build a machine that a human uses. Cars are a great example.
Software development, instead, focuses on functionality for humans moving through humans to be displayed by machines. In other words, software development is more human than what lean typically deals with.
Agile: A Human Face on Lean
When you put Agile into the mix with lean, suddenly you have a much more human experience with software development. Instead of cold, hard, metrics, you have philosophies like Individuals and Interactions over Processes and tools. While still being concerned about the widgets (stories) flowing though, you’re also concerned about the people working those widgets. Rather than expecting robots, you’re dealing with people.
Final Thoughts
This concept is still percolating, and hopefully, I’ll have deeper thoughts around it, but for now, let me know if this resonates.
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