Lean, not Mean
I’m happy that there are two “Lean” sessions on Friday’s program, as I believe Lean ideas are one of the main inspirations of Agile methods.
I present the “Toyota Way of Managing Projects“. Readers of this blog know my fascination with the Toyota Way. In this session, we explore the 14 principles of the Toyota Way, their equivalents in agile methods (if they exist) and how I’ve applied them in “real life“. If you think we have nothing to learn from manufacturing, come to this session so that we can have a heated debate. If you want to explain to a manager where all these weird agile ideas come from, you could do worse than use Toyota, the most successful manufacturer, as an example. The similarities between the Toyota Way and agile are striking. Coincidence? I think not. This session has already run at XP Day France and will be presented at XP Day London.
In “Haste makes waste! Oh no, it does not!“, Rob Westgeest, Tjakko Kleinhuis and Willem van den Ende use a simulation game to explain the Lean concept of “Flow” (one of the 14 principles) and how this can be applied to software development. What’s not to like in this session? It’s about a central concept of Lean; there’s a fun simulation; participants are involved actively; the session introduces a new idea and shows how it applies to software development. That’s the quintessential XP Day Benelux session.
