Lean and Scrum - Chicken and the Egg
For some reason I can't explain, metaphors abound with respect to farm animals and agile (Pigs and Chickens for instance). So, I figure I'll pile on a bit here! I've seen, read, and listened to several agile and lean experts discuss how lean and agile are related. The discussion is a bit frivolous in my opinion, but after hearing it enough times, I wanted to set the record straight on Scrum. We built Scrum for one reason. We wanted a process that reflected how software was built rather than one that tried to control how people should think and structure code. While at Easel Corporation, as the software development manager for the first ever Scrum (Ken Schwaeber hadn't yet started the CSM marketing machine, so there was no such thing as a "Scrum Master"), I had to figure out how to manage my team in an environment where most of the requirements weren't well understood, and those that we did understand seemed to change as quickly as they could be committ...