Management Articles by Mary Poppendieck

• Lean Programming - part 1 of 2   view details
  "Assembly-line production techniques apply to software, too."

• Lean Programming - part 2 of 2   view details
  "Total Quality Management still rings true for software." Not a perfect representation of Deming's ideas (in our opinion) but an example of Deming's ideas continuing to spark interest.

• Lean Software Development   view details
  "All lean thinking starts with a re-examination of what waste is and an aggressive campaign to eliminate it. Quite simply, anything you do that does not add value from the customer perspective is waste."

• Why the Lean in Lean Six Sigma?   view details
  "Lean software development changes the focus from gathering requirements to encoding all requirements in tests. It introduces the concept of refactoring, that is, creating a simple design at the beginning of development to handle early requirements, and t

• Lean Development and the Predictability Paradox   view details
  "The best way to achieve predictable software development outcomes is to start early, learn constantly, commit late, and deliver fast. This may seem to cut against the grain of conventional project management practice, which is supposed to give more manag

• Unjust Deserts   view details
  The article explores the problems caused by performance appraisal. "Ranking people for merit raises pits individual employees against each other and strongly discourages collaboration."

• Competing On The Basis Of Speed   view details
  Google posts webcasts of presentation given at the Googleplex (like this one). Here lean ideas are related to software development.

• Lean for Software   view details
  "I believe that the measurements imposed by traditional project management methods are the biggest impediment to the successful implementation of lean development. In particular, instead of measuring variation from plan, we need to start measuring the del

• The Role of Leadership in Software Development   view details
  "In this 90-minute talk from the Agile2007 conference, Lean software thought leader Mary Poppendieck reviewed 20th century management theories, including Toyota and Deming, and went on to talk about 'the matrix problem', alignment, waste cutting, planning

• Lean Software Development - A History   view details
  "Today, most software development is not a stand-alone process, but rather a part of developing products or services. Thus lean software development might be considered a subset of lean product development; certainly the principles that underpin lean product development are the same principles that form the basis of lean software development."