In reply to a conversation from my infoQ news item: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scrumdevelopment/message/33790. Ken felt that this had go long past the purpose of the scrum development newsgroup (to help people implement scrum).

The key post (BTW I've expanded slightly on the original):
On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 12:33 PM, Michael Dubakov <firefalcon@...> wrote:
>
> Hmm, for me it sounds like "Lean is better than Agile".
> Also it sounds like "Lean is not agile, it is something different".
>
> I don't agree with both (well, it is just extrapolation of the initial phrase).

I can't comment on this - although I don't believe one is better than the other its just each is a different set of tools to be taken out and applied at a different time. Neither is perfect.This isn't about lean per-se, but the Kanban approach as described by Corey Ladas, David Anderson, etc.

In addition I'm not saying you should start with Scrum, I'm saying start with something and make that work. Once you've got that internalised then consider eliminating iterations. For most teams the potential waste of iterations is probably the smallest waste you have to deal with. I would solve that problem only when others are well optimised.

Why not do this immediately? Because most teams still need planning, demos and retrospectives. Few teams I've seen or coached have the stop the line mentality needed to make the Kanban approach work. Corey has suggested that they do without Retrospectives because anytime there is a problem they stop the line. As it stands many teams have a hard enough time recognizing and surfacing problems during retrospectives let alone noticing them as they happen around them. Similiarly I've found the planning meeting is where teams really acquire their understanding of story.

So basically I think that the Scrum/XP/... ceremonies force the team to do things that Corey, David (Anderson) and co do because its in their DNA.

Finally I note that all of the successful Kanban teams that I know of already had some significant Agile experience. If I were betting my project I wouldn't want to be a trailblazer in that regard (unless I had Corey/David/et al for a coach).

I look forward to being ripped to shreds :-)

Cheers
Mark Levison