Wednesday, November 22, 2006

December 4th - Meet Scotland's premiere Lean Thinker at AgileScotlland

Hi Everyone,

The next AgileScotland event will be something a little different.

I'm absolutely delighted that Stuart Ross - Scotland's premiere Lean Thinker and named by Scotland on Sunday newspaper as "The Man who would save Scottish Industry" - will be joining us to talk about the tools, techniques, and thinking of Lean Thinking.

You can read the Scotland on Sunday article here: http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/business.cfm?id=219312006. It is a very easy and interesting read.

What's this got to do with Agile? Quite simply, many - but not all - of the Agile tools, techniques and thinking are grounded in Lean Thinking. While it is true that software development is not a type of manufacturing, there is still a huge amount that Agile has learnt from Lean. This will be a very interesting session if you want to know WHY agile works and how to make agile better.
  • Did you know that TDD is the software incarnation of a japanese lean / quality practice called Poke Yoke? It's one of the least known quality practices but one of the most powerful - both in software and in manufacturing. It also prevents your house from burning down.
  • Did you know that the one common factor across all agile approaches is also the key factor in Lean manuacturing?
  • Do you know the difference between the manufacturing concepts of push and pull? And why the differrence is the key to making agile work?
  • Have you read the Poppendieck's Lean Software Development books or attended their AgileScotland training sessions, and like to know where they learnt their stuff?
Please join us at VISION Consulting's offices, Fettes Park, 496 Ferry Road, Edinburgh, EH5 2DL at 7:30. Call me on 07919403972, if you need any further information.

Stuart is a fascinating story teller, and he will be sharing some fascinating stories about real life Lean implementations here in Scotland. I hope you can make it. It'd help reduce my stress if a few of you sent me a note saying that you're coming :)

Clarke