Lean and agile software because or despite rising complexity by Yves Caseau

Yves Caseau - Lean & Agile Software Development – October 2019 1/18
Lean and Agile Software,
Because or Despite Rising
Complexity
Dr. Yves Caseau
Group CIO, Michelin
National Academy of Technologies
http://informationsystemsbiology.blogspot.com/
https://twitter.com/ycaseau
October 7th, 2019 (v0.2)

Part 1 : Adding Lean Roots to Agile Software Development,
Because of Complexity
Part 2: Systemic Conditions for the Emergence of
Lean & Agile Practices
Part 3: Lean and Agile Governance,
Changing the DNA of Large Organizations
Outline

Agile software development
Agile in a nutshell
 Iterative, small lots
(time-boxed sprints)
 Focus on delivering and
measuring customer
satisfaction
 Autonomous cross-functional
teams self-organize to
co-develop design, code
and architecture
 Synchronized team works
with emphasis on face-to-face
communication

Agile against VUCA
What we want to avoid
 Rework
 Missed TTM
 Undeployed code
 Communication waste
 Agile brings systemic benefits in
a VUCA world
 Volatility: backlog re-prioritization
/ sprint frequency
 Uncertainty: user stories & re-
prioritization
 Complexity & Ambiguity:
Customer feedback & demos
 Up to a point …

 Short-term agility with incremental approach extended with
longer-term focus on capability and skills
System thinking through visual management
Adding Some (Other) Lean Roots
Kaizen : from root cause analysis to problem-solving-based
learning

Four Key Practices
A3 for Kaizen
Voice of Customer
5S for Software
Systemic Visual Management

 Complex systems require “antifragile” capitalization –
focus on skills and collective learning
Complexity of “digital world usage” requires to listen to the user,
really well, quite often
Lean and Agile Because of Complexity
Complexity of iterative processes needs to be balanced by
refactoring (gardening) – from project to product

Part II
Systemic conditions for
the emergence of
lean & agile practices

Agile is a Shared “Mental Model”
 Agile starts with a shared
vision of the world
 “Waterscrum” delivers very
small benefits
 Shared mental model
 Effectuation
 User stories
 Agile requires shared
motivation and engagement
 face-to-face business/dev
conversations

Lean Operations Require Buffers
Queueing Theory
Reduce WIP to increase flexibility and reactivity
To collaborate is to share one’s buffers with each other
Continuous improvement and learning by doing
require buffers
“Lean Buffers” : self-organized time for the team,
towards a shared goal

 Regular access to user feedback is necessary
to grow the solution value
 This is easy in small structures, harder in large companies
The Need for a Continuous Feedback Loop
Shared access to “Voice of Customer” is the best way to align
efforts between teams in “agile at scale”

Software Craftmanship as a corporate value
 Love your code
 Cherish your coding
standards
Value your developers
Respect technical
experience
// finds a cell with a min count (heuristic)
findPivot(g:Grid) : any
-> let minv := 10, cmin := unknown in
(for c in g.cells
(if (c.value = 0 & c.count < minv)
(minv := c.count, cmin := c)),
cmin)
// solves a sudoku : branch on possible
// values using a recursive function
// branch(...) does all the work :)
solve(g:Grid) : boolean
-> when c := findPivot(g) in
exists(v in (1 .. 9) |
(if c.possible[v]
branch((c.value := v,
solve(g)))
else false))
else true
// first propagation rule
r1() :: rule( c.value := v =>
(store(c.line.counts,v,0),
store(c.column.counts,v,0),
store(c.square.counts,v,0),
for v2 in (1 .. 9)
(if (v != v2 & c.possible[v2]) noLonger(c,v2),
for c2 in (c.line.cells but c) forbid(c2,v),
for c2 in (c.column.cells but c) forbid(c2,v),
for c2 in (c.square.cells but c) forbid(c2,v))))
// if c.count = 1, the only possible value is certain
r2() :: rule( c.count := y & y = 1 =>
c.value := some(y in (1 .. 9) | c.possible[y]))
// if a value v is possible only in one cell, it is certain
r3() :: rule( updateCount(cs,v) & cs.counts[v] <= 1
=> when c := some(c in cs.cells |
c.value = 0 & c.possible[v]) in
c.value := v
else contradiction!())

Part III
Lean and Agile Governance,
Changing the DNA of Large Organizations

Reconcile Short & Long Term with Product Culture
 Short & Long-term
 “Situation potential”
 Velocity comes from skills
 Product culture
 Well-suited to information
systems
 Continuous releases /
coding standards
 Refactoring
 Increase release frequency
to build skills
 Lean “talk time” journey
 Build “DevOps muscle”

True Empowerment for Autonomous Squads
 What a “true product owner”
means for developers 
 Frequency of decision
matters
 Complexity implies that
context does not travel via
PowerPoint …
 Empowerment because of
complexity - Jurgen Appelo:
“The real reason for
empowerment is the
manageability of the complex
system itself. Smart managers …
empower people to prevent the
whole system to break down”

 The customer will decide what works for her and what does not
 The customer is the architect of her own experience
Service exposure (API) is not an IT matter
The Customer is in Charge
The customer picks her software ecosystem

17
 Architects on-demand
System engineering coach and champion
The Role of Lean Architecture
Refactoring champion - promotes TD cleaning in backlog
API interface and “integration grammar” owner

Conclusion
Lean & Agile : no other way to deliver software value
in a complex changing world
Lean & Agile practices are “grown, not designed”
 Managers are gardeners.
They must protect the conditions of emergence against
Taylor-ed, control-addict, top-down corporate cultures
 This is not a choice : “software is eating the world” …
and some companies are doing it well 

Lean and agile software because or despite rising complexity by Yves Caseau

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Lean and agile software because or despite rising complexity by Yves Caseau