Lean Software Development: A Field Guide
Mary and Tom Poppendiek have done it again. They have posted the first three draft chapters of their new book Lean Software Development: A Field Guide.
The thing I most appreciate about Tom and Mary’s work is their deep understanding of both Lean Manufacturing and Agile Software practices.
There’s definitely a lot the software development world can learn from lean manufacturing, but I’m convinced that there is even more that we can learn from the way Toyota and Honda do product development.
Product development and manufacturing are different worlds
A simplistic focus on eliminating wasted effort as in manufacturing is likely to backfire when applied to software development. Luckily this book gives us a peek into the keys to great product development processes by looking into amplified learning, and set based development.
Hopefully we’ll see more on concurrent development, integration events, and knowledge capture-transfer (through trade-off curves) and other important pieces of the Toyota/Honda product development process as they post more chapters.
If you are interested in Lean and IT Management, this book like it’s predecessor, is definitely worth your time.