Agile Development Blog

Looking for the perfect trend article to pass on to your executives about Agile development? Check out Dan Woods‘ well-researched, executive-level article “Why Lean and Agile Go Together” on Forbes.com Jargon Spy.

Dan describes how the Agile impact in software is similar to the Lean impact in manufacturing of the 90’s.  I initially struggled with the analogy until I realized he is not saying that software development is like manufacturing. He is saying that the concepts and techniques applied in Lean manufacturing are coming to large-scale software development.

I completely agree and believe the model of how we build software is changing just like Dan describes.  Using the model from the Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, the change looks like this:

Lean Software Concept

That was a great decade – I see much of the last decade of improvement coming from a real effort to take responsibility for how we perform our craft.  The ground up work in Agile, Scrum, XP and Lean has increased velocity, increased quality and increased the quality of life for many in our industry.  I am personally in a much better working environment; how about you?

So what’s ahead for 2010?- With Agile software development hitting the mainstream, the guiding ideas on how to design and deploy software is changing for most software driven organizations.  As more teams and organization make the transition to the Agile/Lean triangle, I see us increasing our investments in skills training, teaching, experimenting and innovating with an increasing number of new tools, techniques and methods.  As a result,  I see this decade moving us past the Lean models of Toyota to something uniquely our own.  I am really excited about the improvement this decade could bring to our industry and all the industries that we impact with our software.

About the Author: Ryan Martens is a goat cheese maker,  founding board member of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado, and Founder and CTO at Rally Software Development. Subscribe today to get free updates by email or RSS.