Agile Roots Part 1 - Goal Necessity and Smaller Batches of Work

Post date: Jan 5, 2014 11:16:23 AM

While reading Goldratt's "The Goal", it was impossible not to think about some ideas that were efficiently applied in manufacturing and they made it to software development delivering outstanding results.

This is the first article in a series exclusively dedicated to this topic.

First of all there is the necessary step to clearly establish and formulate a goal at system level (usually the company) that can be translated at lower levels such as project level. During the fill in process of the Business Model Canvas throughout agile, it is important to state the release goal and the goal of each sprint. Only then can one ensure the fact that user stories identified for the sprint are inline with the next upper level goals.

Another important manufacturing aspect that led to increasing business throughput was the smaller batches of work at all levels, these coming together with the need of more frequent setups. This was an acceleration trigger for the speed of delivery. Agile works similarly by employing smaller batches of work as part of the project - a.k.a. releases and sprints with the need of extra setup (in this case the more frequent release and sprint planning meetings). The last years showed significant productivity increase in successful agile setups using these techniques.

Similarities do not stop here, more is to be found in the next installment…