Lean Development and Agile Methods for Large-Scale Products: Key Thinking and Organizational Tools for Sustainable Competitive Success

 

Increasingly, large product-development organizations are turning to lean thinking, agile principles and practices, and large-scale Scrum to sustainably and quickly deliver value and innovation. However, many groups have floundered in their practice-oriented adoptions. Why? Because without a deeper understanding of the thinking tools and profound organizational redesign needed, it is as though casting seeds on to an infertile field. Now, drawing on their long experience leading and guiding large-scale lean and agile adoptions for large, multisite, and offshore product development, and drawing on the best research for great team-based agile organizations, internationally recognized consultant and best-selling author Craig Larman and former leader of the agile transformation at Nokia Networks Bas Vodde share the key thinking and organizational tools needed to plant the seeds of product development success in a fertile lean and agile enterprise.

 

Coverage includes  

  • Lean thinking and development combined with agile practices and methods
  • Systems thinking
  • Queuing theory and large-scale development processes
  • Moving from single-function and component teams to stable cross-functional cross-component Scrum feature teams with end-to-end responsibility for features
  • Organizational redesign to a lean and agile enterprise that delivers value fast
  • Large-scale Scrum for multi-hundred-person product groups

In a competitive environment that demands ever-faster cycle times and greater innovation, applied lean thinking and agile principles are becoming an urgent priority. Scaling Lean & Agile Development will help leaders create the foundation for their lean enterprise–and deliver on the significant benefits of agility.

 

In addition to the foundation tools in this text, see the companion book Practices for Scaling Lean & Agile Development: Large, Multisite, and Offshore Product Development with Large-Scale Scrum for complementary action tools.


Agile and iterative methods have emerged as the most popular approaches to software development, and with good reason. Research (examined and cited in detail within this book) shows that iterative methods reduce the risk of failure, compared to traditional models of development. This book is an efficient introduction for both managers and practitioners that need a distilled and carefully organized learning aid for the hands-on practices from planning to requirements to testing and the values that define these methods. The author also provides evidence of the value of switching to agile and iterative methods. By studying this book, the reader will learn to apply the key ideas in agile and iterative development, the details and comparison of four influential iterative methods (Scrum, Extreme Programming, Evo, and the Unified Process), answers to frequently asked questions, and important related management skills. The book's goal is quality information that can be quickly understood and applied.

Scaling Agile Bundle

by Craig Larman and Bas Vodde

Published 18 October 2017