October Links

• My favourite link this month is Kent Beck’s lecture, Software G-Forces: The Effects of Acceleration (90 minutes). The eXtreme Programming founder lays out a scale of software release frequencies: annually, quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily, hourly. He shows where on this scale the software industry is now and the direction it is moving. He shows that moving from one mark on this scale to the next involves a non-trivial organizatioal change, parting with some practices (and sometimes, whole departments) and instituting new ones. Suppose you deliver at a certain frequency and have your software development process all figured out. Now, if you had to deliver twice as frequently, do you still have it figured out?
• From Lean-Kanban Benelux 2011 conference:
  • David J. Anderson’s keynote, Kanban: When Is It Not Appropriate?
  • Presentations by Bob Marshall and Grant Rule: Rightshifting Explained and Realizing Value. The two presentations introduce the Marshall Model, the four mindsets, the symptoms and treatments – recipes for the transition to the next mindset.
  • Links to all other materials have been posted on 14principles.com
  • Organizers have also posted videos of all talks
• Dee Hock’s article, The Chaordic Organization: out of Control and into Order. This article introduced the term chaordic. It explains what it means, gives one example of a chaordic organization and explains the principles on which it was built.
• David J. Anderson’s article, Understanding the Process of Knowledge Discovery. I heard earlier that some Kanban gurus started shunning the term value stream mapping, considering it to be manufacturing baggage and not the best fit for knowledge work. But I didn’t figure out what to replace it with. This article provides the answer. Knowledge discovery process is more than a terminology change. The emphasis shifts from work centers, assembly and part-retrieval steps to identifying dominant activities. The state transitions represent changes in dominant activities instead of handoffs between individuals or work centers.

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