In the early 1950’s, Toyota was scrambling to stay alive
in a shattered economy. After a massive cash flow crisis triggered
devastating layoffs, the company’s leaders scrambled to conserve cash.
With survival at stake, a vast amount of ingenuity was aimed at making
sure that every yen and every minute and every bit of experience
counted.
Today more than ever, system development could use a
good dose of the same attitude. We have to figure out how to do things
just-in-time rather than just-in-case – because this is the only
rational approach in tough economic times. We need to figure out how to
stop letting defects creep into our code – because we don’t have time to
waste “hardening” our software; we have to build hardened code from the
start. Just as a family or a country pulls together in a crisis, we need
join forces across all layers and functions in our company and work
together to find better ways to develop systems. We need to keep on
improving because no matter what our current approach is, it simply
isn’t good enough moving forward.
We have seen many companies adopt agile practices and
see excellent initial results. But once the low hanging fruit has been
picked, these initiatives often wane and results plateau. We are often
asked how an organization can continue to see the same level of
engagement and improvement they experienced at first. In this workshop
we try to answer that question; we suggest six areas of focus for those
who want to move their system development process to the next level.
Y
ou will learn:
