Successful marriage of Lean and Scrum
A tale of how an unlikely agile relationship provides the most value.
The reality is that most people tend to exclusively lean (ha! pun intended) towards Lean or Scrum, and I believe that most value lies in a successful marriage of the most unlikely partners.
Here is the kicker and I firmly believe that in simple terms:
- Scrum adds user-centric value through the delivery of new features
- Lean aid sustainability via continuous improvements to internal processes and reduction of waste
However, we can only achieve this by employing a hybrid approach — an approach where the coexistence of the user-centric and business-centric mindsets provide long-term business sustainability. Therefore future-proofing the business and maintaining a high level of user satisfaction.
The answer lies in balance…
The truth is that Lean, Scrum and Agile are indeed very different concepts that focus on various facets of value delivery. This article goes into an excellent level of detail when it comes to a fuller description and the differences between the two.
Furthermore, we need to look into how they differ and what exactly is the goal of each. At its core:
- Agile and more specifically Scrum is all about delivering value to users through working software
- Lean is about improving the ways of delivering value and more importantly reducing waste
However, this is only the tip of the iceberg and a very simplistic view that in fact, when further simplified can show an interesting perspective.
Looking at the timeline of product delivery, it is evident that Agile and the Scrum framework’s most significant benefit is the initial and ongoing collaboration with a client — especially when looking at single iteration (a single sprint).
However, a vacuum exists between gathering the customer’s requirements and shipping a working version of the software. Such gap typically comprises of delivery events such as design, implementation and testing. Nevertheless, the question remains, from a management perspective, how we can define that void? The answer is relatively simple — describing the exact process of how we will deliver the value. The definition often is an output of a workshop focusing on deriving a Value Stream Map (VSM). VSM, in its simplest terms, is a clear definition of an end-to-end process of value delivery from inception to completion.
Nevertheless, the VSM and Lean principles go beyond a single iteration and apply to the business’s overall process of value delivery. However, we still capture iteration events which naturally become a part of a process improvement activities by default.
Therefore, we have a two-part continuous improvement embedded around each iteration:
- focusing on users needs and shipping the right thing for the customer
- concentrating on internal efficiency and business continuity that
But in addition to the iteration-based user focus, we enabled ourselves to have a good view of the big picture and improve at every stage of the value stream.
This, in turn, is the perfect scenario of a marriage of the most unlikely partners that no-one saw coming!
But hey, this is IT, we are kind of engineers, right?
