Scaling Lean & Agile Development: Thinking and Organizational Tools for Large-Scale Scrum

[Book Review Team]

Author/s: Craig Larman and Bas Vodde
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Review by: Jeanne Boyarsky
Rating: 7 horseshoes

"Scaling Lean & Agile Development" has a subtitle "Thinking and Organizational Tools for Large-Scale Scrum." The vast majority of the book applies to software development in general (or at least agile development) and is not specific to Scrum. Two chapters are dedicated to Scrum and some others mention it in passing. Much more space was dedicated to lean practices and Toyota's approach. Which makes sense since "Lean" made the title and "Scrum" made the subtitle.

I liked the emphasis on experiments - ideas to try or avoid. They are spelled out before the book starts and then become the subtitles. I also liked the emphasis on systems thinking and fallacies.

A few points particularly resonated with me including the dangers of lines of code as a metric, the dangers of specialization and discussion of a programming interview.

The book reads like a good textbook. It's not hard to read. There are lots of references to others books (and part two of this book.) It has a good mix between theory and experience. Weighted towards experience - almost like an MBA textbook, but more fun to read.

And it mentions someone from JavaRanch. You'll have to read the book to find out who.

[Book Review Team]

Author/s: Craig Larman and Bas Vodde
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Review by: Lasse Koskela
Rating: 8 horseshoes

"Scaling Lean & Agile Development: Thinking and Organizational Tools for Large-Scale Scrum" is the first of two books co-authored by the same duo. This first volume covers the underlying theory needed for understanding the dynamics of scaling agile development to large organizations, including one of the best introductions to Systems Thinking that I remember reading.

Indeed, the first part of this book is all about thinking tools such as Systems Thinking, Lean Thinking, and Queuing Theory. Throughout the book, the authors refer back to these theories when they try to illuminate the "what" and "why" of various dynamics.

The second part focuses more concretely on how to scale a product development organization. It starts with a thorough, seminal chapter on Feature Teams and continues with more general discussion of what makes teams work. True to their style of writing, these chapters are full of references to related research. Knowing the authors, I expected nothing less. After team work, the authors move on to discussing a scaling technique called "Requirement Areas", specialization, organizational impediments, even budgeting and HR.

The third and last part of the book is essentially an appendix containing the "Scrum Primer" by Gabrielle Benefield and Pete Deemer. Personally, I think this appendix could've been left out, considering that most readers should already be familiar with Scrum.

Again, this book is perhaps the most thoroughly researched text on agile development I've read (and I've read most of them) and the authors clearly know what they're talking about. Having said that, it is also quite a heavy read considering that it's only some 300+ pages. I read it in one day, barely leaving the couch but I can imagine that others might not enjoy the theory-heavy approach as much.

With that said, while it's not full of the kind of concrete tips we'd like to see, this book does offer a strong foundation for understanding how to scale and how not to scale up organizations for agile development. I highly recommend it to leaders, change agents and agile coaches involved in large-scale transitions.