toniBlog » Lean

The unknown variable, Che Guevara theories applied to agile teams

toni — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 07:22:39 +0000

In Che: Part One, Ernesto Che Guevara states:

In War and Peace Tolstoy remarks that military science assumes that bigger armies with more men wield greater force.
On the other hand, only vaguely, do they recognize that during military combat the final strength of an army is also its true physical capacity multiplied by one unknown variable.
One unknown variable. This variable is none other that the spirit of the troops measured as their greater or lesser desire to fight and confront danger.
Men with the desire to fight who also understand why they are fighting regardless of who they are fighting whether under military geniuses or those of normal intelligence fighting with clubs or machine guns that fire 30 rounds a minute these men will put themselves in the best positions and so they will win.

Immediately after hearing this I’ve started a comparison with agile projects.

It’s obvious in these days, with agile becoming mainstream that bigger armies (expensive tools? costly hardware? costly solutions?) and bigger teams don’t imply success in software development.

What is then the unknown variable in an agile team?
I would compare the physical capacity with the knowledge base of the team, with the general collective intellect.
The desire of fighting is nothing else than desire of success and play with risks and issues in a project.
But then, it’s in the understanding of the why they are fighting the most interesting part.

I’ve seen teams over-performing in few different situations: some were strongly committed to the success of a startup, feeling part of it (my experience at Fluidtime), some other were committed to reach excellence (a common behavior at ThoughtWorks).

The why can be different from team member to team member, some people need to feel that they are part of a whole, some others need recognition and differentiation.
Some others are carrier driven, some others have a strong desire to learn, improve.

Finding the right motivation in your team members will make your team run faster and smoothy, the unknown variable will boost your speed and quality.

5S and Software Development

toni — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 07:48:10 +0000

Phase 1 – Seiri, Sorting: Going through all the tools, materials, etc., in the plant and work area and keeping only essential items. Everything else is stored or discarded.

Remove unused code
Uninstall useless software
Remove unused libraries

Phase 2 – Seiton, Straighten or Set in Order: the intent is to arrange the tools, equipment and parts in a manner that promotes work flow.

Build Scripts
Shortcuts
Symbolic Links to reach dev paths
Labelling of builds / deploy to QA

Phase 3 – Seiso, Sweeping or Shining or Cleanliness: Systematic Cleaning or the need to keep the workplace clean as well as neat.

Keep desk clean
Keep the OS desktop clean
Sort out emails

Phase 4 – Seiketsu, Standardizing: Standardized work practices or operating in a consistent and standardized fashion.

Patterns
Communication, common language

Phase 5 – Shitsuke, Sustaining the discipline: Refers to maintaining and reviewing standards. Once the previous 4S’s have been established, they become the new way to operate. Maintain the focus on this new way of operating, and do not allow a gradual decline back to the old ways of operating.

5S definitions are taken from wikipedia

choose your next car: fiat duna, toyota prius or ferrari f60?

toni — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 15:30:34 +0000

Mass Production

Lean

Craftsmanship

If you’re lucky, you can afford Craftsmanship, good for you. You’ll have top quality, in a hand crafted sports car.

Or if you didn’t follow the market in the last 20 years you’ll opt for a second hand Fiat Duna, mass produced in Brazil in the nineties and you will spend almost nothing (well not including costly maintenance): nobody wants a Duna!

Maybe you want to go lean. You want to spend a little more and be environmentally friendly (the Prius is a Hybrid) and get a sweet piece of technology.

The challenge for the Craftsmanship movement is to keep the cost low, the challenge for the lean movement is to show to all the world how great the quality/price relationship is.

There’s no hope for you if you’re following mass production/waterfall process: you will end up with an ugly broken car.

A very long list of Agile, Lean & C. books

toni — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:02:28 +0000

I’ve used to have this list on a Google Spreadsheet, it took me quite a while to sort it (the first 3-5 books for each category are more essential than the others) and place the links, but here it is, more than sixty agile-related books!

Agile Process

Additional Context

Agile Development

Lean