Lean Software Development and Theory of Constraints

[Vasile V. Alaiba]

Hi,

There is a lot of buzz around agile methods, both in management and software development. My perception as it is know is that Lean Software Development is primarily oriented towards the technical aspects of the SD processes, whereas TOC is a general management practice.

Can both coexist in a company (or department, team) and if yes, what can a manager and his team do to achieve good results?

Thanks

[Adeel Ansari]

from TOC I can think of ..... mmm Table Of Contents?

[Ilja Preuss]

Originally posted by Vasile V. Alaiba:
My perception as it is know is that Lean Software Development is primarily oriented towards the technical aspects of the SD processes

Where does that perception come from? Mine is different...

[Lasse Koskela]

Originally posted by Adeel Ansari:
from TOC I can think of ..... mmm Table Of Contents?

There's also Theory of Constraints...

[Mary Poppendieck]

Theory of Constraints and Lean practices are very compatible. Lean is primarily oriented around principles, however, not specific practices.

On the other hand, Lean does demand a couple of things: Just-in-Time flow and Stop-the-Line quality. To achieve these results in software development, you must figure out how to move rapidly from customer request to delivery, and how to avoid building up a bunch of partially done work or ignored requests that slow down the delivery of value. It also means that you find and fix defects the moment they occur, which pretty much means that you use some form of test-driven development and continuous integration. Large, after-the fact merges and regression tests are not compatible with Stop-the-Line quality.

The Theory of Constraints could be expected to find big-bang integration to be a huge bottleneck in software development, and attack it in a similar manner as I just described.

Mary Poppendieck