Ever since I was
introduced to concepts of Lean, Agile and more recently to Lean Startup, I knew these are all related but how exactly wasn't very clear to me. I looked around on web but couldn't get a satisfactory answer. Last month, I had a
chance to hear Adobe's agile gurus, Peter Green and Hart Shafer on this topic. While
I cannot share the wonderful presentation due to copyright issues here is a
very brief gist of it (with my own interpretations and inputs) -
- Agile, Lean and Lean Startup are all related to each other as they talk about responding rapidly to changing environment.
- All of these have distinct principles but they are still related. IMO all of them flow from Deming's Plan-Do-Check-Act model.
- Lean and agile both talk about how to complete work to deliver a product.
- Lean comes more from manufacturing background and therefore focuses on pull and value stream mapping.
- Agile comes from software development and therefore talks about team organization which lean does not say anything about.
- Lean Startup talks more about aspects other than actual product development viz. product ideation, customer discovery and sales. It focuses on customer experimentation
- A combination of all these practices will result in maximum productivity for end-to-end product development.
