Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit [Paperback]

Mary Poppendieck (Author), Tom Poppendieck (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Lean Software Development shows software professionals how to achieve breakthrough quality, savings, speed, and business value by adapting the seven "lean" principles that have already revolutionized manufacturing and R&D. Drawing on 25+ years' experience leading enterprise projects, the authors show how to use these principles to create agile processes that work - because they're optimized for your environment.

From the Back Cover

Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit

Mary Poppendieck Tom Poppendieck

Forewords by Jim Highsmithand Ken Schwaber

• Adapting agile practices to your development organization
• Uncovering and eradicating waste throughout the software development lifecycle
• Practical techniques for every development manager, project manager, and technical leader

Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit

Lean software development: applying agile principles to your organization

In Lean Software Development, Mary and Tom Poppendieck identify seven fundamental "lean" principles, adapt them for the world of software development, and show how they can serve as the foundation for agile development approaches that work. Along the way, they introduce 22 "thinking tools" that can help you customize the right agile practices for any environment.

Better, cheaper, faster software development. You can have all three—if you adopt the same lean principles that have already revolutionized manufacturing, logistics and product development.

• Iterating towards excellence: software development as an exercise in discovery
• Managing uncertainty: "decide as late as possible" by building change into the system.
• Compressing the value stream: rapid development, feedback, and improvement
• Empowering teams and individuals without compromising coordination
• Software with integrity: promoting coherence, usability, fitness, maintainability, and adaptability
• How to "see the whole"—even when your developers are scattered across multiple locations and contractors

Simply put, Lean Software Development helps you refocus development on value, flow, and people—so you can achieve breakthrough quality, savings, speed, and business alignment.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional (May 18, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321150783
• ISBN-13: 978-0321150783
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #79,304 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book that teaches how to think agilely, June 1, 2003

By	Michael Cohn "agile developer" (Lafayette, CO USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit (Paperback)

Books written during the first phase of agile software development have been about very specific practices we should employ. There are some excellent books on the Extreme Programming, Feature-Driven Development and Scrum agile processes. These books teach us "do a, b, and c if you want to do Extreme Programming" or "do x, y and z if you want to do Scrum."

In the last year we've seen books by Highsmith (Agile Software Development Ecosystems) and Cockburn (Agile Software Development) that represent the second wave of agile software development-that of learning to think agilely rather than following a prescribed set of agile rules. Mary and Tom Poppendieck's book is the latest and best book for teaching how to think agilely.

The book contains 22 "thinking tools." The thinking tools are drawn from the world of lean manufacturing where they have helped improve product delivery speed, quality and cost. Each tool is presented as a guideline. Each thinking tool is described with enough detail that you can put it into practice; but, more importantly, the reasons supporting each are made explicit. So, instead of simply reading that it is good to "deliver as fast as possible" we learn how rapid delivery is supported by pull systems (where work is pulled into the current step from the prior step), how queuing theory helps us identify bottlenecks, and how to calculate the cost of delay (to see which bottlenecks are worth removing).

This book is the perfect blend of highly actionable instructions and descriptions of why those actions work. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wishes to improve his or her software development process. The authors' ideas are applicable both to projects using agile approaches today and to more traditional, plan-driven projects.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Learning from Lean Manufacturing, July 4, 2003

By	Steve Berczuk (Arlington, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit (Paperback)

This is an excellent discussion of how the principles of Lean Manufacturing apply to Software Development. The authors explain why the usual metaphor of software as manufacturing is not quite right, and why the metaphor of Lean Manufacturing is something we can learn from. The book is clearly written and the authors provide examples and anecdotes to help you to understand their points. This was a fairly quick read, and I am likely to refer to it often.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good, practical book, May 17, 2006

By	Mark Meuer (Minnesota, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit (Paperback)

Our reading group at work recently read "Lean Software Development." There are several things I really like about this book:

1. Its thinking is clearer than most. The Poppendiecks make sharp distinctions between principles, tools, and practices. (More on this will follow.)

2. It presents an Agile approach without demanding that one follow all tenets of Extreme Programming (such as pair programming).

3. It recognizes that in the past it has been a mistake to think of software development as being roughly analogous to manufacturing. Creating custom software is not very much like assembling cars within a factory.. Software development is much closer to product development, much more like the work that goes into designing the car in the first place. Principles (not necessarily techniques!) that work well in product design can have a much more straightforward application in software design.

4. They specifically address the needs of safety-critical software, talking about how to apply these principles in environments that are heavily regulated or where a software failure may endanger lives.

The book does suffer at times from and affliction common to this genre: over-enthusiasm. There can be a sense that all we need to do is follow what they say and all will be well. But, for the most part, the authors provide reasonable, realistic guidance for those looking to improve the way they go about creating software.

Now that we have the overview, let's look at the meat of the book: Agile principles. There are seven Agile principles which should govern a group's software development process:

1. Eliminate Waste
2. Amplify Learning
3. Decide as Late as Possible
4. Deliver as Fast as Possible
5. Empower the Team
6. Build Integrity In
7. See the Whole


A chapter is devoted to each principle. In each, the principle is described, examples are given from both product and software development, and a number of "tools" are suggested as ways to apply the principle in software development.

The principles are valid within any development effort, software or otherwise. For example, a good process will always seek reasonable ways to eliminate waste. In product development and manufacturing, waste may include scrap material that does not end up in a product. In software, the definition of "waste" will include things like partially done work, extra processes, extra features, waiting,
etc.

It is very important to keep the distinction between principles, tools, and techniques in mind. Principles must be reasonably applied to a given environment. The authors put it quite well: (pp. 179-180)

* Eliminate waste does not mean throw away all documentation.
* Amplify learning does not mean keep on changing your mind.
* Decide as late as possible does not mean procrastinate.
* Deliver as fast as possible does not mean rush and do sloppy work.
* Empower the team does not mean abandon leadership
* Build integrity in does not mean big, upfront design.
* See the whole does not mean ignore the details.


"One team's prescription is another team's poison. Do not arbitrarily adopt practices that work in other organizations; use the thinking tools in this book to translate lean principles into agile practices that match your environment."


I strongly recommend this book.