Lean from the Trenches

About this book

Lean from the Trenchesis all about actual practice. Find out how the Swedish police combined XP, Scrum, and Kanban in a 60-person project. From start to finish, you'll see how to deliver a successful product using Lean principles. We start with an organization in desperate need of a new way of doing things and finish with a group of sixty, all working in sync to develop a scalable, complex system. You'll walk through the project step by step, from customer engagement, to the daily "cocktail party," version control, bug tracking, and release. In this honest look at what works--and what doesn't--you'll find out how to: Make quality everyone's business, not just the testers. Keep everyone moving in the same direction without micromanagement. Use simple and powerful metrics to aid in planning and process improvement. Balance between low-level feature focus and high-level system focus. You'll be ready to jump into the trenches and streamline your own development process. Contents Foreword Preface PART I: HOW WE WORK 1. About the Project 1.1 Timeline 5 1.2 How We Sliced the Elephant 6 1.3 How We Involved the Customer 7 2. Structuring the Teams 3. Attending the Daily Cocktail Party 3.1 First Tier: Feature Team Daily Stand-up 3.2 Second Tier: Sync Meetings per Specialty 3.3 Third Tier: Project Sync Meeting 4. The Project Board 4.1 Our Cadences 4.2 How We Handle Urgent Issues and Impediments 5. Scaling the Kanban Boards 6. Tracking the High-Level Goal 7. Defining Ready and Done 7.1 Ready for Development 7.2 Ready for System Test 7.3 How This Improved Collaboration 8. Handling Tech Stories 8.1 Example 1: System Test Bottleneck 8.2 Example 2: Day Before the Release 8.3 Example 3: The 7-Meter Class 9. Handling Bugs 9.1 Continuous System Test 9.2 Fix the Bugs Immediately 9.3 Why We Limit the Number of Bugs in the Bug Tracker 9.4 Visualizing Bugs 9.5 Preventing Recurring Bugs 10. Continuously Improving the Process 10.1 Team Retrospectives 10.2 Process Improvement Workshops 10.3 Managing the Rate of Change 11. Managing Work in Progress 11.1 Using WIP Limits 11.2 Why WIP Limits Apply Only to Features 12. Capturing and Using Process Metrics 12.1 Velocity (Features per Week) 12.2 Why We Don't Use Story Points 12.3 Cycle Time (Weeks per Feature) 12.4 Cumulative Flow 12.5 Process Cycle Efficiency 13. Planning the Sprint and Release 13.1 Backlog Grooming 13.2 Selecting the Top Ten Features 13.3 Why We Moved Backlog Grooming Out of the Sprint Planning Meeting 13.4 Planning the Release 14. How We Do Version Control 14.1 No Junk on the Trunk 14.2 Team Branches 14.3 System Test Branch 15. Why We Use Only Physical Kanban Boards 16. What We Learned 16.1 Know Your Goal 16.2 Experiment 16.3 Embrace Failure 16.4 Solve Real Problems 16.5 Have Dedicated Change Agents 16.6 Involve People PART II: A CLOSER LOOK AT THE TECHNIQUES 17. Agile and Lean in a Nutshell 17.1 Agile in a Nutshell 17.2 Lean in a Nutshell 17.3 Scrum in a Nutshell 17.4 XP in a Nutshell 17.5 Kanban in a Nutshell 18. Reducing the Test Automation Backlog 18.1 What to Do About It 18.2 How to Improve Test Coverage a Little Bit Each Iteration 18.3 Step 1: List Your Test Cases 18.4 Step 2: Classify Each Test 18.5 Step 3: Sort the List in Priority Order 18.6 Step 4: Automate a Few Tests Each Iteration 18.7 Does This Solve the Problem? 19. Sizing the Backlog with Planning Poker 19.1 Estimating Without Planning Poker 19.2 Estimating with Planning Poker 19.3 Special Cards 20. Cause-Effect Diagrams 20.1 Solve Problems, Not Symptoms 20.2 The Lean Problem-Solving Approach: A3 Thinking 20.3 How to Use Cause-Effect Diagrams 20.4 Example 1: Long Release Cycle 20.5 Example 2: Defects Released to Production 20.6 Example 3: Lack of Pair Programming 20.7 Example 4: Lots of Problems 20.8 Practical Issues: How to Create and Maintain the Diagrams 20.9 Pitfalls 20.10 Why Use Cause-Effect Diagrams? 21. Final Words A1. Glossary: How We Avoid Buzzword Bingo Index