What Lean Product Developers Can Learn From Agile SW Development (and vice versa)

Click here for Mary Poppendieck's bio

Lean Product Development and Agile SW Development have many concepts in common: strong focus on customer value, eliminating non-value-added activities, heightening visibility of the development organization's and improving the development process. As with all engineering activities, software developers create knowledge in the form of architecture diagrams, object models and ultimately code. Agile software experts have spent a great deal of time thinking about how to improve the flow of work in software teams, and how to manage all the knowledge created. How does this relate to lean and how does lean apply in such a challenging environment?

Lean concepts and tools such as visible project planning (obeyas), visible knowledge, LAMDA / PDCA and even set-based design can benefit from agile software's experience with leveling workflow, making progress visible, increasing customer input and breaking work down into manageable pieces.

In this panel, four industry leaders will discuss how they apply lean and agile software development in their companies. From software embedded in everyday products to military systems to test software, the practitioners in this panel have grappled with some very tough problems. After summarizing their experiences, the panel will answer questions posed by moderator Mary Poppendieck, including questions submitted by the audience.

Join us to find out what lean is really like when applied to the really challenging problems of software-intensive product development, and get ideas that even the most hardware-centric development teams can use to better manage their development programs and ensure that customer value is embedded into products from the very beginning.