Lean and Agile Strategies - Research Paper Example

Lean/Agile Strategies Introduction: Lean program improving the efficiency of the business process. The agile program is highlighted as an alternative to, and possibly, improves upon leanness. It also improves efficiency, using different methods. Objective of this paper: The most important aim of this paper has been to clarify and operationalise the concept of lean manufacturing, and to develop and test a model that can evaluate the degree of leanness possessed by manufacturing firms. These are giving results. These are showing a strong relationship between managerial commitment to Just in time/total quality management (JIT/TQM) and investments in the investments of supporting manufacturing infrastructure and also show that there is a correlation between firm’s claims to the adoption of lean production and actual changes made in this direction. There is a positive relationship between investments in SMI and actual changes towards lean principles and performance. The main industry where lean production has been applied successfully is the tableware industry. Finally, it is important to know that lean manufacturing is not a system panacea to solve short term competitive problems, and that its effects can only be seen in the long term. Agile software refers to a group of software development technologies which are used for effective modelling. Agile uses principles and practices for this purpose. But it is necessary that agile software principles should not only be sufficient to achieve this objective but it also needs to cater to creation and maintenance of documentation too. It is also necessary to consider what strategies agile uses for agile/lean modelling. Agile uses so many methods for their documentation. Agile management generally promotes project management process that encourages inspection and adaptation. It also promotes a leadership philosophy that encourages team work, self organization and accountability, as also a set of engineering tools that allow for rapid delivery of high quality software. In the process of analysis, agile strategy uses some methods such as, lean manufacturing, soft systems methodology and Six Sigma. (Agile project management 2009) For developing this methodology, agile uses certain steps. Agile methods are not directly involved in long-term planning. The important agile development methods are: Iterations team work collaboration, and finally, Process adaptability throughout the life cycle of the project. Iterations are short term frames that typically last one to four weeks. Iterations are worked on by team through a full software development cycle, including planning, recruitment analysis, design, coding, unit testing and acceptance testing when a working product is demonstrated to stakeholders. Multiple iterations may be required to release a product or new features. Team members play an important role in agile modelling. Agile methods use face to face communication rather than written documents when the whole team is in the same location. When the team is working in different locations, they maintain daily contacts through video conferencing, voice, e-mail etc. When most of the agile team is working in a single open office, it facilitates such communication and the team size is typically small. Agile uses some specific tools and techniques such as, continuous integration pair programming test driven, development, design patterns, domain – driven design, code refactoring etc. (What is highbeam research? 2009). Other techniques are often used to improve quality and enhance project ability. The important topic for this study is agile strategy. The important principles behind agile strategy are lean manufacturing and six sigma. The most important method which is used in agile strategy is waterfall method. This method is used for micro managed projects The waterfall model is seen as bureaucratic slow, demeaning and inconsistent with the ways that software actually performs effective work. Some of the principles behind the agile are; Customer satisfaction by rapid, continuous delivery of useful software Working software is delivered frequently (weeks rather than months); working software is the principal measure of progress. Even late changes in requirements are welcomed (This does not mean code and run; instead removing an existing feature or moving a deadline forward to accommodate late/unplanned feature requests). Close daily cooperation between business people and developers. Face to face conversation between business people and developers. Face to face conversation is the best form of communication. Projects are built around motivated individuals, who should be trusted. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design. Simplicity. Self-organizing teams. Regular adaptation to changing circumstances. STRATEGIES FOR AGILE: While considering agile documentation, certain important points need to be noted. The fundamental issue in agile modelling is communication, not documentation. This is because without proper communication, no one can survive in an organization. So, while considering any organization, communication plays an important role. In the documentation process, agile documents stable things, and not static things. Also, it takes an evolutionary approach to documentation development, seeking and then acting on feedback on regular basis. It provides customer tests and developer tests. It also considers cost of ownership for a document, and someone must choose to make their investment. Well written documents which support agile becomes good in their activities and performance. The comprehensive documentation does not ensure project success. In fact, it increases chances of failure. Models are not necessarily documents, but documents are necessarily models. The relationship between models, documents and source code plays important role. There are some issues associated with documentation. Software development and document development are the two important aspects relating to agile. The primary goal is to produce working software and secondary goal is to enable the next effort. And in the process of developing the software, the developer should have thorough knowledge and also technical writers should have the writing skill. In the case of software development, for the technical writing, they need to search for suitable candidates for the job. The problems which arise at the time of documentation is, sometimes the outcome is different from what they prefer to produce. There are some hand off’s in the process of documentation. When one group person provides documentation to another group person, then hand off’s may occur. For the documentation purpose, agile uses following best practices and strategies; In the process of writing, agile documents give specification to all the documents and the written documents give stable concepts and not speculative ideas. It keeps document just simple enough, but, it does not provide documentation that is too simple. Agile puts all the information in the most appropriate method and procedure. It displays all the information publicly. Determination of document is the next step in documentation. It prepares document with a purpose only and it focuses on the needs of the actual customers of the document. After determining the document, all the customers can specify their individual requirement. After deciding what the document is to be, the next step is to finalize when to do their documentation. While considering this, communication is very important and hence they should find better ways to communicate. For improving the writing in documentation, they prefer executable specifications over static documents. The majority of the information captured in traditional specification documents such as requirements specification, architecture specification or design specification can be captured as “executable specifications” in the form of tests. When we take a “Test-Driven Development” (TDD) approach, we effectively write detailed specifications on a Just- In –Time (JIT) basis. With TDD we write the test, either at the customer / acceptance level or the developer level. Before writing sufficient functionality should be provided to fulfil that test. The tests are used for two purposes; they specify the requirements / architecture design and they validate our work. This is an example of the practice of “single source information”. (Agile modeling 2008). Strategies spend time to plan the initial needs and anticipate the future developments. Throughout the process, success metrics and milestones are checked to be sure the project is meeting its goals. The strategic services provided by Agile are: Business care development for project justification. Custom research and competitive analysis Needs assessment and project scoping. Information architecture. Concept development. Process/reengineering. Budgeting and project plan development. Gap analysis and skill set appraisal. (Agile modeling 2008). Strategic agility always tries to do experiments. Focus of Agile system is mainly on flexibility. It always gives more importance to the customers. Agile using makes it simple to order process for manufacturing. Agile software improves speed and quality of product development. It increases customer satisfaction and customer morale. Lean agile partners provide complete services for clients who would like to move to agile practices. The important agile strategic service is agile coaching. Coaching and outsourcing is different in their activities. The term “coaching” is a very cost efficient way to balance agile strategy. Enterprise coaching is another technique in agile strategy. In enterprise coaching, coaching is offered for managers and executives to scale agile practices beyond software cantered projects across the enterprise. Agile strategy sessions Agile software development practices can significantly improve speed and quality of product development, increase customer satisfaction, and raise employee morale and retention. Yet, the vast majority of agile adoption programs fail, despite having seeded teams, where each member was successful individually. You can avoid this fate by starting off with a strategy session. A strategy session is typically a two-day event. Our coaches will meet with your agile leaders and key people who are (or will be) on the agile team, (Enterprise agile solutions 2009 giving our goals, current capabilities, and our situation. We can use the strategy session alone or with other services from us. There are some training courses offered by agile strategy. These are the important training courses provided by agile/lean strategy; agile awareness course and lean thinking awareness course. There are some better ways to develop the software’s. Agile document is one such, always trying to avoid failures. Feed back in agile process should be both timely and economical. Agile is using right medium for their success. Part of any successful agile project, we believe, is choosing the right technologies for the project. We do believe agile principles can still help you be successful no matter what tech mix you are working with. Nevertheless, quality technology that helps you to both move quickly and respond to change really amplifies your success. That is doubly true when taking a strategic view. In the past, many consultants and consulting firms have tried the opposite approach: They will look for a technology that is complicated and difficult to work with and teach, become expert in that technology, and then help to promote that technology, hoping to create a market with their specialized knowledge. That strategy has worked well for some, but we think customers are wising up to that approach. The current software development situation is less than ideal. Systems are regularly delivered late, or over budget if they are delivered at all. Systems often do not meet the needs of customers and it becomes necessary to develop them again and again. All the customers are annoyed because of these problems and is neither willing to trust, nor work with us because they have been inconvenienced too many times in the past. To make matters worse, customers do not have a very good understanding of what is being done, how it is being done, or why it is being done. The end result is that they put unrealistic demands and do not provide the support needed to accomplish these goals. So, to remove all these problems, there is need for good software development to support the customer’s requirements. It is in this context that Agile is playing an important role in the minds of the customers. Most agile team focuses on the scrum modelling approach. That means focusing on the team. Their team based training enable teams to transition to effectiveness. Agile is using scrum model in various ways; first step is implementing scrum for our team. In this step, it is providing the basic understanding that is required for every person on the agile team. It is focused on the needs of the team and how team members should work together. The second way is implementing scrum for multiple teams; that is, work with and across, multiple teams. The core agile strategies are as follows; Develop our ability to create a calm, clear and resourceful mind amidst chaos, change and uncertainty. (Brazen blogs 2009). This is the most important strategy by using Agile because; the quality of thinking depends upon the quality of response and all these depend on the final results received. Develop your ability to easily and comfortably change your thoughts, feelings, behaviour and skills, and get comfortable with the changing process; If what we are doing is not working, you need to do something different. And if you can easily learn new internal and behavioural responses and be familiar and comfortable with the psychological process of changing our self that should be welcome Develop our ability to utilize our whole mind; As technology advances and more and more of the left-brain-directed tasks can be done by computers or outsourced to be done more cheaply in developing countries, the people whose skills will be most valued in the market will be the people who have developed their right-brain-directed thinking skills and are able to use their WHOLE mind – the story – tellers, and the creativities. Conclusions: Thus it is seen that agile technology could be very useful for solving today’s managerial problems and also provide real time business solutions to a myriad of issues that continue to haunt top management in terms of systems accountability and performance. Through the judicious use of Lean/Agile strategies, it is felt that wastes and production inefficiencies could be considerably reduced and all round improvements in production and business applications could be gained on a long term basis. References Agile project management 2009, Versionone: simplifying software delivery, viewed 5 May 2009, http://www.versionone.com Agile modelling (AM): effective practices for modelling and documentation 2008, Agile Modelling, viewed 5 May 2009, http;//www.agilemodeling.com Brazen blogs: the inconvenience of change 2009, Brazen Careerist, viewed 5 May 2009, http://www.brazencareerist.com Enterprise agile solutions 2009, Lean-Agile Partners, viewed 5 May 2009, http://www.leanagilepartners.com What is highbeam research? 2009, HighBeamResearch, viewed 5 May 2009, What is highbeam research? 2009 Read More