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.

Craig Larman is a management and product development consultant in enterprise-level adoption and use of lean development, agile principles and practices, and large-scale Scrum in large, multisite, and offshore development. He is chief scientist at Valtech, an international consulting and offshore outsourcing company. His books include the best-sellers Agile & Iterative Development: A Manager’s Guide (Addison-Wesley, 2004) and Applying UML and Patterns, Third Edition (Prentice Hall, 2005).

Bas Vodde works as an independent product-development consultant and large-scale Scrum coach. For several years he led the agile and Scrum enterprise-wide adoption initiative at Nokia Networks. He is passionate about improving product development, an avid student of organizational, team management, and product development research, and remains an active developer.