Mary on Lean Software

Monday night last week (19th), I left work early and drive to Sydney to see Mary Poppendieck speak. I think it was worth the effort.

Mary spoke on the growth of Just-in-Time into Lean Manufacturing. The lessons to be learnt from Toyota. How designing things and making things are alike and not alike.

One real interesting point that got made, was that software organizations are designed in a defencive way. Why organize that way? Because they assume failure is the likely outcome!

That the open multi-disciple teams that are needed to good (engineered) design, are not the teams that get put together. The teams a partitioned to protect the different parts of the organization from the fallout of failure! Got to have deniability! We told you that wouldn’t work, and we got it down on paper. It’s not our fault!

I’ll get her new book ‘Implementing Lean Software’, next pay.

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