Lean against Agile – really?

There is a theme emerging from my 2011 coaching assignments; Lean and Agile initiatives are everywhere I go, and people are confused!

Sign of times: a pretty significant group of Lean and Agile experts just got together in Berlin earlier this month for the first European ‘ALE 2011 unconference‘; sharing their experience and knowledge on these two converging approaches.

What’s all the fuss about Lean and Agile?

In a nutshell, these two giants are fighting to get enterprise governance attention.

Most managers I’m meeting with are all mixed up on why, where, and how Agile and Lean can co-exist in their enterprise governance framework. The duality goes as follow: each manager in the organization is either a Lean, or an Agile proponent, but only a few of these leaders promotes or understands the two concepts at the same time.

If an enterprise tries to deploy Agile and Lean concurrently, well… one may encounter some robust resistance. At the very least, some serious and legitimate concerns can be expressed from the organization leaders; whether they are willing or not to give their consent to both initiatives.

“Why bother? We need to integrate only one of these performance-enabling approaches in our governance framework.”

I obviously do have a point of view on this dilemma, but before sharing it with my business partners and potentially adding fuel to the fire, I took a look back at some of my recent readings on the matter.

Three papers caught my attention:

1. Forbes Dan Wood on Why Lean and Agile go Together – January 12th 2010

“In practice, Agile seems to be changing for the better by adopting Lean thinking in a large way. Rally says that its customers get to market 50% faster and are 25% more productive when they employ a hybrid of Lean and Agile development methods.”

2. Forrester senior analyst Dave West on Agile Processes Go Lean – April 25th 2009

“Organizations that have taken advantage of both agile and lean approaches together have seen benefits such as reduced costs, improved time to market, and higher quality. But perhaps the most surprising result is in the areas of innovation and staff motivation.”

3. IGI Global hot off the press 2011 study conduct by a Sweden university and telecom giant, Ericsson (Is Lean Agile and Agile Lean?) – 2011.

I do encourage readers to take a look at this paper. The folks from BTH and Ericsson analyze into the details both paradigms based on goals, principles, practices and processes.

Guess what? Lean and Agile shares a lot together, but not everything

Furthermore, they complement each other in a big way

If one is serious about bringing her company to the next level of performance, recent researches, observations from industry experts and real-life case studies are suggesting to create a hybrid strategy combining Lean and Agile.

First – Lean and Agile shares the same strategic goal

Rest assure the two paradigms are focusing on highly similar targets; so no collisions ahead into the enterprise governance framework:

• Lean’s core idea is to maximize customer value while minimizing waste.
• Agile’s highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

Sounds compatible?

“A lean organization provides an ideal environment for agile customer collaboration practices; it encourages clients’ input that defines their needs, frequent project reviews, and daily meetings. Lean doesn’t let a business unit and IT go off in separate groups.”
Forrester – Dave West, Agile Processes Go Lean

Second – Lean and Agile complements each other on their principles and practices

Industry experts have demonstrated that Agile delivers on its promises: when done correctly, and for the right reasons. However, most enterprises going Agile recognize that the main challenges for deploying Agility evolves around cultural and organizational issues.

Agility and one of its most popular methodologies, Scrum, do not say much about principles and practices on mitigating cultural and organizational barriers in order to ease adoption.

Then, let’s say one want to scale Agility in his enterprise, after experiencing a success with a local pilot project. How about having 20 Agile projects at the same time in various units in the organization… what will he do?

This is where I do think Lean and Agile starts to get interesting. These 3 areas: culture, organizational barriers and scaling, are remarkably tough issues.

When the work of several teams needs to be connected, Lean definitively has an advantage over Agile on ways to accomplish this. Furthermore, Lean’s Value Stream Mapping brings to the equation the end-to-end view – the global view. This is a key concept for the enterprise governance because the organization needs to understand how IT delivers business solutions: from initial ideas, to production and consumption across the whole business process workflow – from A to Z.

IT and Software organizations widely adopted Agile, and they are delivering high-value solutions to their customers. These groups now needs a little help from Agile’s partner: Lean, for getting the big picture and for scaling to wide adoption.

“Agile has much less to say about how to connect the work of many different teams, and that’s where Lean has a huge impact. — Large organizations that are using Agile are applying a value stream approach in which various development teams are organized in sequential and parallel streams of work so that at the end of each iteration, you get a new version of the product.”
Forbes - Dan Woods, Why Lean and Agile Go Together

“At companies where agile methods have been successfully adopted, Forrester has found that the application of lean principles — the same thinking that has helped manufacturers change how they work to improve efficiency — has helped solve many cultural and organizational problems tied to software development.”
Forrester - Dave West, Agile Processes Go Lean

Obviously the organization will need a little bit more than Lean and Agile to succeed. For example, training and coaching managers to support them in embracing change. This will be the subject of another blog post.

Finally – Let me try to illustrate how I see Lean and Agile working together

Lean’s end-to-end perspective is crucial in getting the overall picture at all times. All business processes are looked into, and waste is eliminated while having the customer at the center of the organization’s priorities.

The Value Stream Mapping is the backbone process for having all Agile teams delivering their business solutions in the most optimal way.