Lean-Agile Software Development: Achieving Enterprise Agility

by Alan Shalloway, Guy Beaver, James Trott

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 The book’s companion Web site, , provides updates, links to related materials, and support
for discussions of the book’s content.

Genres: Software, Management, Nonfiction

262 pages, Paperback

First published September 21, 2009

Reviews

[Thomas · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was a few blog posts worth of material rehashed over 250 pages, crammed full of business jargon and laid out with prose that's dry as a bone. There are a couple good nuggets in here: the critiques of Scrum's failings are pretty apt, and the notion of limiting the amount of work in progress at a given moment seems useful. But most of the book's recommendations are laid out in as abstract end-states, with little attention paid to how to get an organization of predictably irrational humans to adopt these notions, and even littler instruction given on the day-to-day implementation of said ideas.

[Maryam · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you want to get a overall view to Lean Agile it is the book you want, but if you need something more practical and with more details it definitely is not. It's just for a start.

[Abu Nasar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good enterprise level perspective

The book puts lean and agile into enterprise level perspective. It covers the product vision, portfolio , roadmap , and support part of the product lifecycle. Also gives management it's due respect in agile setup. Also advocates what needs to be done to make scrum more effective. Makes good case for kanban. I like the holistic view the author takes. A good read for those interested in agile at the organisation level.

[Steve Fraser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good advice at portfolio level spoiled by fundamental misunderstanding of scrum

Skip all advice about Scrum as this author does not understand it very well. Substitute product owner where you see produce champion and advice is good. Product owner serves one product not just one team. Product owner may have team to assist as product champion has demoted product owners to serve them in this text. With this fix, the book is quite insightful

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great summary and introduction to Lean-Agile

[Bob Schatz]

Good job of pulling together all the best practices of Agile, Lean, Scrum. Having practiced all of these for many years, the only criticism I would have of the book is the misleading interpretations of Scrum. I feel like the authors have been exposed to some poor Scrum practitioners. I have worked with companies to successfully employ all of these concepts without labels of what method they fall under. The important thing is to build the competency to make the organization better.

[Mikael Svahnberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good mix of shallow overview and hands-on tips. Glosses over some important aspects with plugs to the authors' other books, but overall a fairly good book that actually merges agile with lean principles.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are interested in how Lean translates into software development, begin with this book. It is a primer on lean software development lifecycle (SDLC).

[Mmdms]

booked out by Rochana 12/10/2010