Lean-Agile Development Practice
Build the right things right – for the whole product
Lean-Agile engineering practices balance two goals:
- Build the right thing
- Build the thing right
Product development has become and continuous to be more complex, the contemporary delivery teams must build the whole product from project initiation: hardware, software, optics, firmware, etc. We coach engineering teams on build it right by creating a feedback loop to sense when the code/ circuitry/ mechanics are not behaving as intended – and having team practices in place to respond accordingly.
Doing a great job building something people want to buy is a path to success! The delivery team needs a healthy relationship with stakeholders to know what should be built. Stakeholders - including customers and technical people - need to make repeated trial-fits between what the market will buy and what is feasible to build. Lean-Agile companies use a feedback loop to check that this continuous, synchronous communication is happening effectively.
Lean-Agile engineering practices balance two goals:
- Build the right thing
- Build the thing right
Product development has become and continuous to be more complex, the contemporary delivery teams must build the whole product from project initiation: hardware, software, optics, firmware, etc. We coach engineering teams on build it right by creating a feedback loop to sense when the code/ circuitry/ mechanics are not behaving as intended – and having team practices in place to respond accordingly.
Doing a great job building something people want to buy is a path to success! The delivery team needs a healthy relationship with stakeholders to know what should be built. Stakeholders - including customers and technical people - need to make repeated trial-fits between what the market will buy and what is feasible to build. Lean-Agile companies use a feedback loop to check that this continuous, synchronous communication is happening effectively.
Figure 1. Team balances relationships with Stakeholders and evolving product
Lean-Agile concepts work for all disciplines in the project effort:
Do it continuously!
Keep the ‘right thing/thing right’ balance going continuously, from product conception, through launch, enhancements and maturity.
Traditional development practices emphasized planning as much as possible up front in a project. That was (and still is) effective in the right situations. But it’s not effective in the area that’s been growing fastest: high tech products and services. It’s not uncommon to have programmed logic, multi-core processors, and software/ firmware running to millions of lines of code at the heart of all sorts of products from toys to hospital equipment. What’s the alternative to planning it all up front? Cross your fingers and hope? No – there is a proven successful alternative. For over 10 years thought leaders in the lean-agile community have been finding practical, responsible ways to do just the key up-front work while using iterative planning during the life of a project.
Do it through closed-loop control
Establish closed loop control:
Do it when it absolutely positively has to work – in safety-critical products
Regulatory bodies typically emphasize that they do not want to dictate your development process. FDA General Principles of Software Validation, sect 4.4 states, "This guidance does not recommend any particular life cycle models – only that they should be selected and used for a software development project." AAMI TIR 45 guidance document has established Lean-Agile as a valid approach.
Reasons why Lean-Agile practices are superior for regulatory compliance:
Quality First: Lean-Agile practices are well-known for being faster to market. That’s good, but you naturally wonder what is being sacrificed to achieve that speed. The simple truth is that by turning the quality dial all the way up, you can get far more done! By building the product with continuous testing, you gain back the time lost to debugging and rework.
Continuous iterative planning: Attempting to do full, complete risk analysis up-front in a project makes it all too likely that the analysis will not be complete. ISO 14971 says “Evaluate risks early and often” but a heavyweight risk analysis process fights against that advice while iterative planning directly supports it.
Continuous Test: Areas difficult to test (especially those for emergency use) are often verified by analysis. Actual testing is a far stronger approach, and the many levels and kinds of Agile testing techniques help you to verify practically everything by direct tests.
Lean-Agile concepts work for all disciplines in the project effort:
Do it continuously!
Keep the ‘right thing/thing right’ balance going continuously, from product conception, through launch, enhancements and maturity.
Traditional development practices emphasized planning as much as possible up front in a project. That was (and still is) effective in the right situations. But it’s not effective in the area that’s been growing fastest: high tech products and services. It’s not uncommon to have programmed logic, multi-core processors, and software/ firmware running to millions of lines of code at the heart of all sorts of products from toys to hospital equipment. What’s the alternative to planning it all up front? Cross your fingers and hope? No – there is a proven successful alternative. For over 10 years thought leaders in the lean-agile community have been finding practical, responsible ways to do just the key up-front work while using iterative planning during the life of a project.
Do it through closed-loop control
Establish closed loop control:
- team to stakeholders and,
- team to evolving product/service
Do it when it absolutely positively has to work – in safety-critical products
Regulatory bodies typically emphasize that they do not want to dictate your development process. FDA General Principles of Software Validation, sect 4.4 states, "This guidance does not recommend any particular life cycle models – only that they should be selected and used for a software development project." AAMI TIR 45 guidance document has established Lean-Agile as a valid approach.
Reasons why Lean-Agile practices are superior for regulatory compliance:
Quality First: Lean-Agile practices are well-known for being faster to market. That’s good, but you naturally wonder what is being sacrificed to achieve that speed. The simple truth is that by turning the quality dial all the way up, you can get far more done! By building the product with continuous testing, you gain back the time lost to debugging and rework.
Continuous iterative planning: Attempting to do full, complete risk analysis up-front in a project makes it all too likely that the analysis will not be complete. ISO 14971 says “Evaluate risks early and often” but a heavyweight risk analysis process fights against that advice while iterative planning directly supports it.
Continuous Test: Areas difficult to test (especially those for emergency use) are often verified by analysis. Actual testing is a far stronger approach, and the many levels and kinds of Agile testing techniques help you to verify practically everything by direct tests.