I’ve read many sources – via books, articles, blogs and Twitter – on what the essence of Lean & Lean Thinking is.
I’m interested though in what you think.
How would you succinctly complete either of the following phrases:
- “Lean Thinking is..?”
- “Lean Thinking means..?”
in such a way that you could use it as a simple (simplistic?) way of assessing whether something truly has the spirit of Lean in it, and isn’t falling into Lameness.
Try to use positive phrasing wherever possible — I find knocking the competition very unproductive (it’s one of the things that annoys me most about immature Agilistas) – to say what Lean is rather than what it isn’t.
I would also value suggestions that help demarcate the Lean/Agile border, accepting that it may be somewhat fuzzy.
Here’s a couple to get you started
- Lean Thinking is making errors unavoidably visible
- Lean Thinking is fundamentally empirical
- Lean Thinking means seeing things from the customer’s point of view, every time.
Feel free to dispute any or all of these!
Suggestions via the comments below (which can cross-post to Twitter), or direct to @martinburnsuk.
Martin Burns
Specialism: Transforming complex delivery organisations to be more Lean/Agile.
Mindset: Continuous Improvement Obsessive
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Lean Thinking Is..? by Martin Burns is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.