Lean Reading List
Jason Dean
For our last Agile meeting, Sterling Mortensen, formerly of HP and now
a Lean Consultant, presented about the core aspects of Lean and the
journey that HP went through in their lean implementation. I'm
including a list of book that he recommended for further information.
If you are interested in getting some real world, pragmatic
instruction about implementing and utilizing Lean, Sterling would like
to hold a class. Let us know what you're interests are.
Thanks all!
Jason
---------
I have selected a few books to get someone started [with Lean] in
several categories:
Theory of Constraints:
“The Goal a process of ongoing improvement” by Eliyahu Goldratt –
introduces the concepts in a business novel about manufacturing
“Critical Chain” by Eliyahu Goldratt – introduces concepts in a
business novel about project management and schedule planning
Lean Processes:
“Learning to See value stream mapping to create value and eliminate
waste” by Mike Rother and John Shook – learning to see how work flows
and how the interactions between work stations causes significant
delay in processes. (in a manufacturing setting)
“Creating Continuous Flow” by Mike Rother and Rick Harris – learning
about the importance of work flowing continuously with less starting
and stopping – all of the Lean methods work at increasing continuous
flow (again in a manufacturing setting)
“Toyota Production System” by Taiichi Ohno – the head of Toyota
Manufacturing describes what Toyota did to catch up and pass US
manufacturing
Queuing Theory:
“Managing the Design Factory a product developers toolkit” by Donald
G. Reinertsen – the first 90 pages introduce the concepts of queues in
product development and how it can affect project schedules.
Change Management:
“Journey to the Emerald City” by Roger Connors and Tom Smith –
explains the cycle that causes change to be difficult and the
importance of creating new experiences to change beliefs so that
people will try new behaviors
“Leading Change” by John P. Kottera classic showing the 8 stage
process for creating change and why skipping a stage can cause the
change to fail
I found that a fusion of Theory of Constraints, Lean, Queuing Theory
and Risk Reduction lead to understanding and improving processes in
significant ways. It can assist Agile in ramping up productivity,
reducing time to complete work and increasing quality. It can help
manufacturing reduce inventories, increase quality, reduce many
overhead costs and shorten time from order to delivery. It helps
project planning and execution to quickly increase schedule confidence
and reduce risk of schedule slips. It works in any size of team, from
a single person to a large corporation. The example I gave about the
equipment company that increased market share 10% while in the
recession had a software team of 8 people plus one manager. The
example of the language testing team that had one engineer as the
manager and 31 workers with mostly high school educations.
I would be interested in teaching a two day class here in Boise to
help people learn how to do this for software. If there is interest in
the APLN I would like to share this knowledge and help people and
companies get even more benefits from their Agile development.
Sterling Mortensen
President of Business Productivity Consulting