The Lean Mindset
Mary Poppendieck | Author, Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit
Tom Poppendieck | Author, Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit
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Analysis is a good thing. Being slow and careful is wise. Rewarding people for performance makes perfect sense. Creating a plan and following it is the best way to get things done. And we should strive to be the best at whatever we do. When we have our analytical hats on, we know these statements are true.
But they aren't the whole truth. Intuition is also a good thing. Being fast produces essential feedback. Purpose works better than incentives for engaging. Probing a complex environment and adapting to its response is the right way to change a complex system. And being the best can get in the way of getting even better. When we are wearing our intuitive hats, we feel that these things are terribly important.
So which hat should we wear? In the last quarter of the 20th century, western companies drifted into the habit of wearing analytical hats most of the time, while the intuitive hats got dusty on the shelf. But since the turn of the century, companies that sport intuitive hats seem to be doing very well. In fact, if we're not careful, they might become a threat to our business.
A company with a lean mindset wears both hats at the same time and knows how to leverage the advantages of each. For those of us who have gotten into the habit of wearing our analytical hats most of the time, a lean mindset means moving our thinking:
- from analytical toward intuitive
- from slow toward fast
- from individualistic toward cooperative
- from disciplined toward adaptive
- from being good toward getting better
This workshop will present research, case studies, and exercises to help you understand what a lean mindset is and how it can help your company become more productive, deliver faster, and experience significantly higher quality.
About Mary Poppendieck
 Mary Poppendieck has been in the Information Technology industry for thirty years. She has managed solutions for companies in several disciplines, including supply chain management, manufacturing systems, and digital media. As a seasoned leader in both operations and new product development, she brings a practical, customer-focused approach to software development problems.
As Information Systems Manager in a video tape manufacturing plant, Mary first encountered the Toyota Production System, which later became known as Lean Production. She implemented one of thee first Just-in-Time systems in 3M, resulting in dramatic improvements in the plant's performance.
Three times Mary has partnered with small companies, twice negotiating and funding a multi-million dollar equity investment. But understanding small companies from the investor point of view was not enough; so she joined one of the start-ups to lead its R&D effort.
A popular writer and speaker, Mary's classes on managing software development offer a fresh perspective on project management. Her book Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit, was published in 20003 and won the Software Development Productivity Award in 2004. A sequel, Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash, was published in 2006, and Leading Lean Software Development: Results are Not the Point, was published in November, 2009. A new book, The Lean Mindset, will be published in September, 2013.
About Tom Poppendieck
 Tom Poppendieck has 25 years of experience in computing including eight years of work with object technology. His modeling and mentoring skills are rooted in his experience as a physics professor. His early work was in IT infrastructure, product development, and manufacturing support, and evolved to consulting project assignments in healthcare, logistics, mortgage banking, and travel services.
Tom led the development of a world-class product data management practice for a major commercial avionics manufacturer that reduced design to production transition efforts from 6 months to 6 weeks. He also led the technical architecture team for very large national and international Baan and SAP implementations.
Tom Poppendieck is an enterprise analyst and architect, and an agile process mentor. He focuses on identifying real business value and enabling product teams to realize that value. Tom specializes in understanding customer processes and in effective collaboration of customer, development and support specialists to maximize development efficiency, system flexibility, and business value.
Tom is co-author of the book Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit, published in 2003, and its sequel, Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash, published in 2006. Leading Lean Software Development: Results are Not the Point, was published in 2009. A new book, The Lean Mindset, will be published in September, 2013.
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Bjarte Bogsnes has a long international career, in both finance and HR. He is currently heading up the Beyond Budgeting implementation at Statoil, Scandinavia's largest company with operations in 36 countries and a turnover of $90 bn USD. On Fortune 500, the company ranks #1 on Social responsibility and #7 on Innovation. Transparency International has named Statoil the most transparent listed company in the world.
Ryan Martens founded Rally Software 10 years ago with the goal of being one of the first for-profit software companies to break the take-make-waste cycle of technology in our society. Today, he stands on the precipice of a major breakthrough toward that goal by launching a foundation that will bring together and fund citizen engineers to help solve some of our world's toughest challenges. Ryan is a founding board member and CEO of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado, which brings together local venture capitalists and start-ups to set aside 1 percent of their profits to charity and is likely to release $2 million to endow Colorado within a 5-year span. Ryan is a mentor at the Unreasonable Institute and Boulder TechStars and a member of the engineering entrepreneurship efforts at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Ryan integrates work, life and sustainability on his farm, raising horses, dogs, chickens, goats, burros, bees, worms and canaries.
Jean Tabaka is an Agile Coach with Rally Software Development in Boulder, Colorado. With over 25 years of experience in the software development industry, she has navigated numerous plan-driven methodologies in a variety of contexts (government, IT, consulting) and in a variety of roles (programmer - remember paper tape?, architect, project manager, methodologist). Her move to Agile software development approaches came in the late 90's as a result of studying DSDM in the UK. Since that time, she has become an Agile devotee, consulting with teams of all sizes worldwide seeking to derive a continuous flow of value through the adoption of Agile principles and practices. She specialises in scaling Agile practices, applying lean principles and practices, and building continuous planning and testing into organisations. She also creates a strong collaborative approach in how she guides organisations in adopting Agile. Jean is a Certified ScrumMaster and Practitioner, a Certified Scrum Trainer, and a Certified Professional Facilitator. She holds a Masters in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University and is the author of Collaboration Explained: Facilitation Skills for Software Project Leaders published in the Addison-Wesley Agile Software Development Series, 2006. She has presented at numerous conferences and seminars throughout North America, the UK, Europe, and India and has written for various publications and journals on a variety of topics regarding Scrum, Lean, Agile testing and quality, and collaboration in Agile teams.
Dave Snowden is the Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Cognitive Edge. His work is international in nature and covers government and industry, looking at complex issues relating to strategy and organisational decision making. He has pioneered a science based approach to organisations drawing on anthropology, neuroscience and complex adaptive systems theory. He is a popular and passionate keynote speaker on a range of subjects, and is well known for his pragmatic cynicism and iconoclastic style.
As an Agile Capability Lead, Dipesh Pala pursues his passion for helping organisations of all sizes to incrementally adopt the benefits of Agile practices. He has a long history in software delivery having worked within a variety of industries as a programmer, business systems analyst, iteration manager and project manager. Over the last five years, Dipesh has helped many project teams as an on-the-ground Agile consultant and mentor. He has been instrumental in rolling out Agile methods in many organisations and is currently coaching and mentoring aspiring iteration managers, Agile project managers and team leaders to become the Agile practitioners their teams need. A keen advocate of simplicity, Dipesh offers simple, practical yet powerful ways to address the challenges team members and managers in Agile environments face today. He continuously pushes individuals and teams beyond the practices and principles to take a step further into the Agile journey.
Kurt Solarte is the Agile Delivery Lead with IBM Interactive & Social Business in Melbourne; leading a consulting practice of Designers, Developers, and User Experience consultants in the agile delivery of interactive web experiences.
Craig Smith has been active in the IT industry for over 15 years. Craig has been an Agile practitioner for over 10 years and is a Certified Scrum Master and a member of both the Scrum Alliance and Agile Alliance and as an Agile Coach he has worked on a number of high profile technical and business projects. Craig regularly conducts Agile training and has presented at a number of Australian and international conferences. Craig is also an Agile Editor for InfoQ and co-hosts an Agile podcast called The Agile Revolution.
