Agile Product Development
You Can’t be Lean Unless You’re Agile
I often notice a lot of confusion between Lean and Agile. People sometimes use these terms interchangeably, even combining them into one, like Lean-Agile. However, it’s crucial to understand the difference to do our jobs effectively. We need to distinguish when we are focusing on being Lean versus Agile, or if we’re failing in either aspect.
Understanding and improving our Agile and Lean practices are key to achieving better business results. But knowing where to begin can be challenging, and many potential pitfalls can hinder your progress. First, it’s essential to recognize how these two concepts are connected. Being Agile doesn’t guarantee you’re Lean, but you can’t be Lean without being Agile first.
The Success of Agile
Agile revolutionized how software is developed, showing impressive results. Many tech giants and their ecosystems thrived using Agile methods. However, their success wasn’t just because they adopted Agile practices; it was due to truly embracing an Agile mindset. Many companies adopted Agile terminologies and rituals, like daily standups and bi-weekly sprints, but didn’t break their work into valuable increments or iteratively improve. This mimicry of Agile actions resulted in superficial organization without real progress.
The true value of Agile lies in enabling teams to work in short, communicative cycles. To benefit from Agile, it’s crucial to leverage these cycles by iterating quickly, testing, and learning from each increment. This forms the core of Lean: Building, Measuring, and Learning.
Continuous Delivery is a Product Problem
Agile involves the ability to deliver quickly. Continuous deployment isn’t just a technical achievement; it’s crucial for the business because it allows for continuous iteration, which is core to being Agile and Lean. If iteration cycles are too long, agility diminishes. Continuous learning, integral to Lean, is made possible by continuous iteration.
For companies to become Agile and Lean, continuous deployment is essential. As product managers, we should advocate for investments in infrastructure and processes that support agility, even if it’s not directly related to our team. Collaborating with tech teams to push for deployment management improvements benefits the entire business. Continuous delivery smooths out the release process, reducing rushed work and tech debt, and speeding up overall progress.
Releases should be frequent and low-effort, encompassing whatever is ready. This reduces the pressure on individual releases, promotes quality work, and enables constant iteration. Product teams should support tech teams in making the case for better release processes. Investing in continuous integration and deployment is transformative for achieving genuine Agile and Lean practices.
What About You?
Do you release fast or slow? How does it affect your company’s ability to react and solve problems? Share your experiences or tips in the comments.