Tuesday, 15 November 2016

A Comparative View of Lean and Agile

Comparing Lean and Agile

While using software Agile you must feel it is very much different from Lean. To ensure the correct application and achieve an effective and efficient organization, you need to know the comparison between Agile and Lean.

Though these two are completely different from each other, still there are some confusion in the similarities and differences in Lean and Agile. So here is a comparative view of Agile and Lean to understand the differences well.

Origin of Lean and Agile

Lean has been developed in a manufacturing industry, while Agile has been developed and conceptualized in the software industry.

Lean has been derived from the Toyota production system.  Toyota Production System (TPS) was developed by two Japanese businessmen. James Womack and Daniel Jones have published a series of book named The Machine That Changes the World, Lean Thinking and Lean Solutions. That helps in conceptualizing Lean also in its actual form.

Agile was developed in 2001, when a team of Chicago had been found a new approach in software development which can reflect the reality of a dynamic software development environment.

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Approach of Lean and Agile

To make an organization or process more effective and efficient, Lean provides a holistic approach. Just like a philosophy Lean has different dimension of cultural change, mindset change. All changes are done along with tool kit embedded in it.

The philosophy of Agile is efficient project management which is specific to application development. Agile is like a technique which is suitable for software industry.

Industries use Lean and Agile 

As a methodology Lean can be used for many industries, businesses or domain. On the other hand, Agile helps to increase the speed of application development in software industry.

Tool kits used by Lean and Agile

Lean has wide ranges of tool kits such as value stream map or VSM, kanban, waste analysis, jidoka, heijunka, multitasking, visual management, supermarket, empowerment, etc.

By taking it from Lean, Agile use tool kits at first stage. These are Kanban, multitasking, visual management, empowerment, etc.

Planning Phase 

When the product owner, scrum master and the team were creating product back log, during its planning phase some of Lean techniques have been used to achieve the desired result.

Specifying value means to understand value from customer's point of view. During this phase the agile team was guided by understanding the value from the eye of the customer.

The key aspect of Lean philosophy is empowerment. It values worker's knowledge at lowest level. To make certain decisions the team should be empowered. Selecting from the product blog to the employment, Agile follows the technique of empowering the team by giving them a free hand.

Execution Phase

When the action of development happens, execution is the core of Agile development. During this execution phase some Lean techniques are used.

Lean basically identifies reduce and remove activities which are not giving any value to the end product. The philosophy of Agile is to identify and remove waste. Low level design work and excessive documentation can be avoided by the team.

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