What Lean Is and What it Isn’t

• The Software World Is Not Like the Physical World and What That Means    Software is lives in a virtual world. Quite different from the world we live in. It is important to know the difference.
• What if Russ Ackoff gave a TED talk? This is a great presentation (12 minutes) of what systems thinking is.

Value

Cost of Delay. “If you only quantify one thing, quantify the Cost of Delay” – Don Reinertsen In a nutshell, the “cost of delay” is what it costs an organization in lost revenue, lost opportunity, increased risks, customer respect, etc., due to a delay in realization of value. Everyone knows intuitively that delays in software delivery impose some economic cost on the organization. But what exactly is that cost, and how do we measure it? Applying a combined Lean-Agile perspective, we can understand these costs better. More importantly, we can use the same perspective to improve the speed and reliability of software delivery, while making important choices about when you’ve delivered enough value.

The Business Case for Agility. Agile is not just for the team anymore. Business can become more profitable while incurring less risk when they take Agile methods to the organization.

Minimum Business Increments (MBIs). It’s exciting to talk about startups and Minimum Viable Products. But more organizations are enhancing their existing products.  Lean how the Minimum Business Increment is one of the most important Lean-Agile methods available.

The Value Stream

• Inherent Challenges at Scale (Article)  Video
• Why Looking at the value stream is so important
• Using the Value Stream to Get to root cause with ‘Five-Whys’.  An example of why the value stream is so important.
• Mapping Your Value Stream (Article)  Video

Other resources not in Foundations of Lean Workshop

• SAFe From a Value Stream Perspective. If you’re doing SAFe, looking at it from a value stream perspective is very valuable.
• The Value Stream Impedance Scorecard (VSIS). A straightforward way of seeing if a change to your value stream will provide value.

Flow

• What Is Flow?
• The value stream of the effective organization
  • Strategic Planning and Lean Portfolio Management
  • Lean Product Management
  • The importance of having an intake process
  • Sequencing the Work to be Done
  • Planning, Collaboration, and Dependency Management
  • Implementation and Integration
  • Release and Realization

Pull

Perfection

Leadership and Management. This references a key article that Lean Management is based on.

Towards Middle-Up-Down Management

Improving Your Company’s Culture. This discusses how management is required to change culture.

Two pages are currently being written that will address this:

• Difference Between Inspect and Adapt and PDSA
• Difference in Belies Results in Differences in Approach

Middle-Up-Down Management: Accelerating Information Creation Nonaka (1988)

Improving Your Company’s Culture  This talks both about the role of management in changing culture and why people don’t resist change.

Supplemental Reading

• Summary of The Art of Action: How Leaders Close the Gaps between Plans, Actions, and Results