Lean Software Strategies: Proven Techniques for Managers and Developers (Hardcover)

~ (Author), James Sutton (Author) "OVER THE COURSE OF ITS EVENTFUL HISTORY, industry has evolved through three paradigms..." (more)
Key Phrases: lean paradigm, lean software development, value stream principle, New York, Big Software, Lockheed Martin (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

--Richard S. McCabe, Principle Member Technical Staff,, Systems and Software Consortium, Inc. 03/18/05

Outstanding! A must read for software practitioners and technical leaders concerned with incorporating integrity and positive attributes into integrated systems design.

Middleton and Sutton offer an innovative treatment of lean production for software, describing how several development teams have effectively integrated many advanced techniques of software engineering. This provocative interpretation of lean thinking should interest anyone who is trying to improve software development for complex systems.

Review by Lisa Crispin: "...This book is a soup-to-nuts explanation of lean production, why it should be applied to software production, and how to apply it." -- StickyMinds.com, February, 2007

Product Description

Lean production, which has radically benefited traditional manufacturing, can greatly improve the software industry with similar methods and results. This transformation is possible because the same overarching principles that apply in other industries work equally well in software development. The software industry follows the same industrial concepts of production as those applied in manufacturing; however, the software industry perceives itself as being fundamentally different and has largely ignored what other industries have gained through the application of lean techniques.

Lean Software Strategies: Proven Techniques for Managers and Developers, shows how the most advanced concepts of lean production can be applied to software development and how current software development practices are inadequate.

Written for software engineers, developers, and leaders who need help creating lean software processes and executing genuinely lean projects, this book draws on the personal experiences of the two authors as well as research on various software companies applying lean production to software development programs.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 468 pages
• Publisher: Productivity Press; 1 edition (May 27, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1563273055
• ISBN-13: 978-1563273056
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #404,090 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #56 in

  Books > Business & Investing > Skills > Office Automation

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Biased towards safety-critical systems, January 4, 2009

By	a reader - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

Lean Software Strategies is a book about applying lean manufacturing ideas to software programming. I believe there is a lot to learn from manufacturing and I was pleased to get this book. After reading it, I am somewhat disappointed. There is nothing wrong with the advice in the book. But I don't feel the authors have really described a lean process. I'll go in the details below. In short, the main technique suggested is to make the whole process more integrated and more rigorous using, for example, formal methods. This reminded me of the book The Cleanroom Approach to Quality Software Development which makes the same claim and ends up with similar results. Lean is more than cleanroom. I expected data about work-in-progress reduction for example but I didn't see that in the book.

Here are more details.
PROS:
- Good introduction to the lean concepts (value, value stream, etc)
- Some interesting ideas to implement lean, especially if you are following a waterfall model. If you have already moved to a milestone model or XP, some ideas will be redundant.

CONS:
- Lack of data regarding the advantage of lean. The projects mentioned are vague and the data presented does not make the case for lean (versus, say, cleanroom as mentioned above).
- Focus on a specific class of applications (safety-critical) without a generalization to other classes of applications. In particular, the use of formal methods may not translate well to other domains.
- Focus on technologies (UML, QFD, TRIZ) without a word on team dynamics, employee training, etc. The soft aspect of lean is ignored.

All in all, I would recommend reading the book; but do not expect that it will change your world.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If Midas had written a book..., July 2, 2007

By	Robert T. Mccann (Aledo, Texas) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

It would be pure gold like this one! This book won the Shingo Award: http://bigblue.usu.edu/shingoprize/AboutUs/index.htm. The selection committee clearly knew what it was doing. The author has created an excellent exposition of how lean manufacturing methods can be applied to create abstract intellectual assets such as software and, by implication, systems engineering plans and designs.

Overall the book is an excellent, well written discourse on lean methodology with numerous examples of its application. The authors explain in clear detail how best to apply several lean tools to plan and to perform major systems and software projects, e.g., TRIZ, Analytic Hierarchy Process, SCR, Blitz QFD, Theory of Constraints, Agile practices, high integrity UML, language selection to support lean production (SPARC Ada), load leveling, and Kano Modeling. The cases where this approach was used provide consistent evidence of success; software productivity was significantly improved over previous practice by roughly a factor of four even though the requirements churn in those same contracts was significantly higher than in other successful projects. It is critical to note that software production was stabilized against serious requirements instability by the lean practices being described. Further, that stabilization was a major contributor to successful completion of the contracts!

In the first few chapters, the author spends some time explaining the niche in which lean methods live and work most effectively. In chapter 5 the author analyzes the SEI's Software CMM model to determine the manufacturing paradigm for software. One should note that, since the publication of the book, the Software CMM has been replaced by a newer model, the Software/System/etc CMMI that addresses several of the lean concerns: http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/.

After some thought it is clear that the fundamental criticism of the Software CMM is that the implementation of any business model by practitioners of the manufacturing paradigm is the principle problem. Such practitioners will likely take a relatively low risk, evolutionary, incremental approach to introduce change. They will therefore initially implement a set of organizational processes that promote and support the manufacturing paradigm in a way that minimizes necessary change, the nearest "as is" state. Such processes should not be expected to be particularly lean until after performance needs drive significant changes to support a leaner approach, the "to be" state. This incremental approach, while fairly smooth and stable can take a decade or more to reach a lean paradigm even if that is the intended end state.

If the authors choose to write a second edition it would be useful to discuss how the CMMI model that has come into use since the writing of this book provides potential synergy with the lean approach. To understand what is improved over the software CMM, one should note that the new CMMI model includes systems engineering process areas rather than being focused exclusively on software. Like its predecessor the CMMI is a process framework and is thus process and performance agnostic. The model is not quite paradigm agnostic; it clearly votes against the craft paradigm by labeling such practices "initial" or "capability level 1". One might speculate that a fully integrated lean approach would garner capability level 5 ratings for the relevant process areas. Further, there is no performance aspect to the CMMI SCAMPI appraisal as there would be with a company performance audit model such as the (Malcolm) Baldridge National Quality Award: http://baldrige.nist.gov/. The CMMI SCAMPI asks if there are specific and generic practices (documented processes) in place to address a set of basic business capability questions (goals), but it does not ask how well those processes perform. It is left entirely up to company management to track and manage process performance. In that respect the CMMI model is independent of the lean manufacturing approach. Synergy with lean methods is both possible and desirable. If the authors choose to write a second addition, it would be valuable to devote a chapter or two on how to develop such a synergistic approach in building and maintaining a comprehensive set of organizational business process assets.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If Midas had written a book... , June 21, 2007

By	Robert T. McCann (Aledo, TX) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

It would be pure gold like this one. This book won the Shingo Award: http://bigblue.usu.edu/shingoprize/AboutUs/index.htm. The selection committee clearly knew what it was doing. The author has created an excellent exposition of how lean manufacturing methods can be applied to create abstract intellectual assets such as software and, by implication, systems engineering plans and designs.

Overall the book is an excellent, well written discourse on lean methodology with numerous examples of its application. The authors explain in clear detail how best to apply several lean tools to plan and to perform major systems and software projects, e.g., TRIZ, Analytic Hierarchy Process, SCR, Blitz QFD, Theory of Constraints, Agile practices, high integrity UML, language selection to support lean production (SPARC Ada), load leveling, and Kano Modeling. The cases where this approach was used provide consistent evidence of success; software productivity was significantly improved over previous practice by roughly a factor of four even though the requirements churn in those same contracts was significantly higher than in other successful projects. It is critical to note that software production was stabilized against serious requirements instability by the lean practices being described. Further, that stabilization was a major contributor to successful completion of the contracts!

In the first few chapters, the author spends some time explaining the niche in which lean methods live and work most effectively. In chapter 5 the author analyzes the SEI's Software CMM model to determine the manufacturing paradigm for software. One should note that, since the publication of the book, the Software CMM has been replaced by a newer model, the Software/System/etc CMMI that addresses several of the lean concerns: http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/.

After some thought it is clear that the fundamental criticism of the Software CMM is that the implementation of any business model by practitioners of the manufacturing paradigm is the principle problem. Such practitioners will likely take a relatively low risk, evolutionary, incremental approach to introduce change. They will therefore initially implement a set of organizational processes that promote and support the manufacturing paradigm in a way that minimizes necessary change, the nearest "as is" state. Such processes should not be expected to be particularly lean until after performance needs drive significant changes to support a leaner approach, the "to be" state. This incremental approach, while fairly smooth and stable can take a decade or more to reach a lean paradigm even if that is the intended end state.

If the authors choose to write a second edition it would be useful to discuss how the CMMI model that has come into use since the writing of this book provides potential synergy with the lean approach. To understand what is improved over the software CMM, one should note that the new CMMI model includes systems engineering process areas rather than being focused exclusively on software. Like its predecessor the CMMI is a process framework and is thus process and performance agnostic. The model is not quite paradigm agnostic; it clearly votes against the craft paradigm by labeling such practices "initial" or "capability level 1". One might speculate that a fully integrated lean approach would garner capability level 5 ratings for the relevant process areas. Further, there is no performance aspect to the CMMI SCAMPI appraisal as there would be with a company performance audit model such as the (Malcolm) Baldridge National Quality Award: http://baldrige.nist.gov/. The CMMI SCAMPI asks if there are specific and generic practices (documented processes) in place to address a set of basic business capability questions (goals), but it does not ask how well those processes perform. It is left entirely up to company management to track and manage process performance. In that respect the CMMI model is independent of the lean manufacturing approach. Synergy with lean methods is both possible and desirable. If the authors choose to write a second addition, it would be valuable to devote a chapter or two on how to develop such a synergistic approach in building and maintaining a comprehensive set of organizational business process assets.