Kevin Rutherford included this blog in the “Carnival of the Agilists“, a twice-monthly posting of noteworthy blog entries about agile. This week’s entry puts this blog and the XP Days Benelux conference in the spotlight.
Have a look, if you haven’t yet, to Emmanuel Gaillot’s “Borrow the first 5 minutes” and Dave Nicolette’s “Lean: process over people?” blog entries. Can’t say I agree with Dave’s conclusion that Lean is for those who don’t trust people…
Remember the ancient Chinese saying, “If P then Q does not imply If Q then P”.
When I say lean is more digestible than agile for those who trust process more than people, it doesn’t imply I believe lean methods are no better than a fallback position for those who don’t trust people. Both approaches yield high value when applied to the right problems and when applied correctly. Ideally, the choice of approach should depend on the objective characteristics of the project, the culture of the organization, and the willingness of the individuals involved to adapt their working style.
In an organization characterized by trust, people can take either a lean or an agile approach to any given problem, based on objective criteria. In an organization that lacks trust, it’s problematic to try and take a “fully” agile approach because agile methods depend on people to do the right thing without (much) supervision, and there’s no “process safety net” to prevent catastrophic failure.
I think in a case like that, lean methods offer a practical way to improve results even for those projects that would otherwise lend themselves to agile methods. Lean methods work with or without a cultural emphasis on people over process, but agile methods cannot work without such an emphasis.