Scaling Lean Agile Development

Lean Development and Agile Methods for Large-Scale Products: Key Thinking and Organizational Tools for Sustainable Competitive Success Increasingly, large product-development organizations are turning to lean thinking, agile principles and practices, and large-scale Scrum to sustainably and quickly deliver value and innovation. However, many groups have floundered in their practice-oriented adoptions. Why? Because without a deeper understanding of the thinking tools and profound organizational redesign needed, it is as though casting seeds on to an infertile field. Now, drawing on their long experience leading and guiding large-scale lean and agile adoptions for large, multisite, and offshore product development, and drawing on the best research for great team-based agile organizations, internationally recognized consultant and best-selling author Craig Larman and former leader of the agile transformation at Nokia Networks Bas Vodde share the key thinking and organizational tools needed to plant the seeds of product development success in a fertile lean and agile enterprise. Coverage includes Lean thinking and development combined with agile practices and methods Systems thinking Queuing theory and large-scale development processes Moving from single-function and component teams to stable cross-functional cross-component Scrum feature teams with end-to-end responsibility for features Organizational redesign to a lean and agile enterprise that delivers value fast Large-scale Scrum for multi-hundred-person product groups In a competitive environment that demands ever-faster cycle times and greater innovation, applied lean thinking and agile principles are becoming an urgent priority. Scaling Lean & Agile Development will help leaders create the foundation for their lean enterprise—and deliver on the significant benefits of agility. In addition to the foundation tools in this text, see the companion book Practices for Scaling Lean & Agile Development: Large, Multisite, and Offshore Product Development with Large-Scale Scrum for complementary action tools.

Lean and Agile Development for Large-Scale Products: Key Practices for Sustainable Competitive Success Increasingly, large product-development organizations are turning to lean thinking, agile principles and practices, and large-scale Scrum to sustainably and quickly deliver value and innovation. Drawing on their long experience leading and guiding lean and agile adoptions for large, multisite, and offshore product development, internationally recognized consultant and best-selling author Craig Larman and former leader of the agile transformation at Nokia Networks Bas Vodde share the key action tools needed for success. Coverage includes Frameworks for large-scale Scrum for multihundred-person product groups Testing and building quality in Product management and the end of the “contract game” between business and R&D Envisioning a large release, and planning for multiteam development Low-quality legacy code: why it’s created, and how to stop it Continuous integration in a large multisite context Agile architecting Multisite or offshore development Contracts and outsourced development In a competitive environment that demands ever-faster cycle times and greater innovation, the practices inspired by lean thinking and agile principles are ever-more relevant. Practices for Scaling Lean & Agile Development will help people realize a lean enterprise—and deliver on the significant benefits of agility. In addition to the action tools in this text, see the companion book Scaling Lean & Agile Development: Thinking and Organizational Tools for Large-Scale Scrumfor complementary foundation tools.

The Go-To Resource for Large-Scale Organizations to Be Agile Rather than asking, “How can we do agile at scale in our big complex organization?” a different and deeper question is, “How can we have the same simple structure that Scrum offers for the organization, and be agile at scale rather than do agile?” This profound insight is at the heart of LeSS (Large-Scale Scrum). In Large-Scale Scrum: More with LeSS, Craig Larman and Bas Vodde have distilled over a decade of experience in large-scale LeSS adoptions towards a simpler organization that delivers more flexibility with less complexity, more value with less waste, and more purpose with less prescription. Targeted to anyone involved in large-scale development, Large-Scale Scrum: More with LeSS, offers straight-to-the-point guides for how to be agile at scale, with LeSS. It will clearly guide you to Adopt LeSS Structure a large development organization for customer value Clarify the role of management and Scrum Master Define what your product is, and why Be a great Product Owner Work with multiple whole-product focused feature teams in one Sprint that produces a shippable product Coordinate and integrate between teams Work with multi-site teams

Agile techniques have demonstrated immense potential for developing more effective, higher-quality software. However,scaling these techniques to the enterprise presents many challenges. The solution is to integrate the principles and practices of Lean Software Development with Agile’s ideology and methods. By doing so, software organizations leverage Lean’s powerful capabilities for “optimizing the whole” and managing complex enterprise projects. A combined “Lean-Agile” approach can dramatically improve both developer productivity and the software’s business value.In this book, three expert Lean software consultants draw from their unparalleled experience to gather all the insights, knowledge, and new skills you need to succeed with Lean-Agile development. Lean-Agile Software Development shows how to extend Scrum processes with an Enterprise view based on Lean principles. The authors present crucial technical insight into emergent design, and demonstrate how to apply it to make iterative development more effective. They also identify several common development “anti-patterns” that can work against your goals, and they offer actionable, proven alternatives. Lean-Agile Software Development shows how to Transition to Lean Software Development quickly and successfully Manage the initiation of product enhancements Help project managers work together to manage product portfolios more effectively Manage dependencies across the software development organization and with its partners and colleagues Integrate development and QA roles to improve quality and eliminate waste Determine best practices for different software development teams The book’s companion Web site, www.netobjectives.com/lasd, provides updates, links to related materials, and support for discussions of the book’s content.

“Companies have been implementing large agile projects for a number of years, but the ‘stigma’ of ‘agile only works for small projects’ continues to be a frequent barrier for newcomers and a rallying cry for agile critics. What has been missing from the agile literature is a solid, practical book on the specifics of developing large projects in an agile way. Dean Leffingwell’s book Scaling Software Agility fills this gap admirably. It offers a practical guide to large project issues such as architecture, requirements development, multi-level release planning, and team organization. Leffingwell’s book is a necessary guide for large projects and large organizations making the transition to agile development.” —Jim Highsmith, director, Agile Practice, Cutter Consortium, author of Agile Project Management “There’s tension between building software fast and delivering software that lasts, between being ultra-responsive to changes in the market and maintaining a degree of stability. In his latest work, Scaling Software Agility, Dean Leffingwell shows how to achieve a pragmatic balance among these forces. Leffingwell’s observations of the problem, his advice on the solution, and his description of the resulting best practices come from experience: he’s been there, done that, and has seen what’s worked.” —Grady Booch, IBM Fellow Agile development practices, while still controversial in some circles, offer undeniable benefits: faster time to market, better responsiveness to changing customer requirements, and higher quality. However, agile practices have been defined and recommended primarily to small teams. In Scaling Software Agility, Dean Leffingwell describes how agile methods can be applied to enterprise-class development. Part I provides an overview of the most common and effective agile methods. Part II describes seven best practices of agility that natively scale to the enterprise level. Part III describes an additional set of seven organizational capabilities that companies can master to achieve the full benefits of software agility on an enterprise scale. This book is invaluable to software developers, testers and QA personnel, managers and team leads, as well as to executives of software organizations whose objective is to increase the quality and productivity of the software development process but who are faced with all the challenges of developing software on an enterprise scale.

"This remarkable book combines practical advice, ready-to-use techniques, anda deep understanding of why this is the right way to develop software. I haveseen software teams transformed by the ideas in this book." --Mike Cohn, author of Agile Estimating and Planning "As a lean practitioner myself, I have loved and used their first book for years.When this second book came out, I was delighted that it was even better. If youare interested in how lean principles can be useful for software developmentorganizations, this is the book you are looking for. The Poppendiecks offer abeautiful blend of history, theory, and practice." --Alan Shalloway, coauthor of Design Patterns Explained "I've enjoyed reading the book very much. I feel it might even be better than thefirst lean book by Tom and Mary, while that one was already exceptionallygood! Mary especially has a lot of knowledge related to lean techniques inproduct development and manufacturing. It's rare that these techniques areactually translated to software. This is something no other book does well(except their first book)." --Bas Vodde "The new book by Mary and Tom Poppendieck provides a well-written andcomprehensive introduction to lean principles and selected practices for softwaremanagers and engineers. It illustrates the application of the values andpractices with well-suited success stories. I enjoyed reading it." --Roman Pichler "In Implementing Lean Software Development, the Poppendiecks explore moredeeply the themes they introduced in Lean Software Development. They beginwith a compelling history of lean thinking, then move to key areas such asvalue, waste, and people. Each chapter includes exercises to help you apply keypoints. If you want a better understanding of how lean ideas can work withsoftware, this book is for you." --Bill Wake, independent consultant In 2003, Mary and Tom Poppendieck's Lean Software Development introduced breakthrough development techniques that leverage Lean principles to deliver unprecedented agility and value. Now their widely anticipated sequel and companion guide shows exactly how to implement Lean software development, hands-on. This new book draws on the Poppendiecks' unparalleled experience helping development organizations optimize the entire software value stream. You'll discover the right questions to ask, the key issues to focus on, and techniques proven to work. The authors present case studies from leading-edge software organizations, and offer practical exercises for jumpstarting your own Lean initiatives. Managing to extend, nourish, and leverage agile practices Building true development teams, not just groups Driving quality through rapid feedback and detailed discipline Making decisions Just-in-Time, but no later Delivering fast: How PatientKeeper delivers 45 rock-solid releases per year Making tradeoffs that really satisfy customers Implementing Lean Software Development is indispensable to anyone who wants more effective development processes--managers, project leaders, senior developers, and architects in enterprise IT and software companies alike.

Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit Adapting agile practices to your development organization Uncovering and eradicating waste throughout the software development lifecycle Practical techniques for every development manager, project manager, and technical leader Lean software development: applying agile principles to your organization In Lean Software Development, Mary and Tom Poppendieck identify seven fundamental "lean" principles, adapt them for the world of software development, and show how they can serve as the foundation for agile development approaches that work. Along the way, they introduce 22 "thinking tools" that can help you customize the right agile practices for any environment. Better, cheaper, faster software development. You can have all three–if you adopt the same lean principles that have already revolutionized manufacturing, logistics and product development. Iterating towards excellence: software development as an exercise in discovery Managing uncertainty: "decide as late as possible" by building change into the system. Compressing the value stream: rapid development, feedback, and improvement Empowering teams and individuals without compromising coordination Software with integrity: promoting coherence, usability, fitness, maintainability, and adaptability How to "see the whole"–even when your developers are scattered across multiple locations and contractors Simply put, Lean Software Development helps you refocus development on value, flow, and people–so you can achieve breakthrough quality, savings, speed, and business alignment.

Today, even the largest development organizations are turning to agile methodologies, seeking major productivity and quality improvements. However, large-scale agile development is difficult, and publicly available case studies have been scarce. Now, three agile pioneers at Hewlett-Packard present a candid, start-to-finish insider’s look at how they’ve succeeded with agile in one of the company’s most mission-critical software environments: firmware for HP LaserJet printers. This book tells the story of an extraordinary experiment and journey. Could agile principles be applied to re-architect an enormous legacy code base? Could agile enable both timely delivery and ongoing innovation? Could it really be applied to 400+ developers distributed across four states, three continents, and four business units? Could it go beyond delivering incremental gains, to meet the stretch goal of 10x developer productivity improvements? It could, and it did—but getting there was not easy. Writing for both managers and technologists, the authors candidly discuss both their successes and failures, presenting actionable lessons for other development organizations, as well as approaches that have proven themselves repeatedly in HP’s challenging environment. They not only illuminate the potential benefits of agile in large-scale development, they also systematically show how these benefits can actually be achieved. Coverage includes: • Tightly linking agile methods and enterprise architecture with business objectives • Focusing agile practices on your worst development pain points to get the most bang for your buck • Abandoning classic agile methods that don’t work at the largest scale • Employing agile methods to establish a new architecture • Using metrics as a “conversation starter” around agile process improvements • Leveraging continuous integration and quality systems to reduce costs, accelerate schedules, and automate the delivery pipeline • Taming the planning beast with “light-touch” agile planning and lightweight long-range forecasting • Implementing effective project management and ensuring accountability in large agile projects • Managing tradeoffs associated with key decisions about organizational structure • Overcoming U.S./India cultural differences that can complicate offshore development • Selecting tools to support quantum leaps in productivity in your organization • Using change management disciplines to support greater enterprise agility