Interview with Mary Poppendieck

What are some of the agile development success stories Mary has seen in government or higher education?

Mary, based on your experience with lean environments and your experience with agile environments, what do you think is the most important improvement or change to be made to the Scrum methodology to make it more “lean”?

What is your favorite experience about agile and lean development to interest people?

Hi Mary,

In your opinion, what is the best way for a company to switch from plan-driven projects to an Agile/Lean approach? Is agile/lean the best environment for all projects, or are there some that might work better if handled in a more traditional way?

Which are the differences between your two books on Lean Software Development?

Mary,
I see teams entering the Lean software “arena” through a specific set of practices (e.g. XP), which often help them attack their most obvious problems. BUT at the same time I see many teams miss the underlying Principles, which would help them to really grow and improve in the long run. What would be your approach to help such a “team with lean practices” to adopt the underlying principles? Thanks!

Mary,

In addition to the lean tools that programmers use, how do you influence lean processes outside the group (minimizing unchecked code downstream in QA and helping upstream specs arrive at the last responsible moment)?

Also, what tools do you see that exist to help manage this type of process (i.e. seeing how many turns features take between development and QA, allowing all team members to triage their own lists, handle gating of large functions (release an item to QA when all needed components have been completed).

Thank you

Hi Mary,

I am planning to launch Lean Concepts and Tools for process improvements. I would like to first introduce Lean thinking and Concepts and some time down the line introduce basic tools. My company is a part of the Outsourcing Industry.

Could you show me a roadmap that’ll make the launch successful.

Thanks
Vivian

Mary, I am looking to benchmark a company that has applied Hiejunka principles within the office. Have you applied this lean tool in your organization?

Mary,

I’d love to see examples (and/or) suggestions of how to implement the following to software organizations:

1) Kanban
2) 5S
3) Visual Workplace
4) The Big Room (Product Management, Development, QA, etc…) — how to best plan and coordinate between all stakeholders.
5) Jidoka
6) SMED
7) 5 Why’s
TPM

An Epic-sized question, I know, but I think sharing your knowledge will help all of us tremendously. Thanks so much!

Hi Mary,

When comparing lean manufacturing techniques to software engineering. Some authors map Toyota’s Set Based Concurrent Engineering to practices such as supplying multiple available time-slots options for a meeting, yet the manufacturing process is really based on parallel development and then survival of the fittest solution. This would be akin to having several developers or teams of developers creating the same components and then selecting the best version.

Have you seen SW companies follow a parallel development approach and aggressive pruning of less suitable solutions? Also, what guidelines (circumstances, batch sizes, etc) would you give for concurrent engineering in SW project?

Many thanks
Mike

Hi Mary!

I’ve heard vaguely, several times, of something that’s “beyond Agile” and referred to as Lean, though I don’t really know if it is. Called a “flow process”, it seems to describe a short-cycle-time software production line, in which there is no backlog, or maybe just a short one. I was referred to your book but didn’t find it.

I must admit, it sounds like lazy Agile to me – just do whatever comes in, don’t bother setting expectations. Any idea what I’m talking about here, where it comes from? Is this a “photocopied too many times” version of some valid approach?

Thanks!
deb