Wayhay ! I am glad to announce that I will be speaking at the European Lean IT Summit 2013 Edition in Paris on October 3rd and 4th. It is some kind of honor to speak in the same event as experts such as Michael Ballé, Steve Bell, Dan Jones, Yves Caseau, Pierre Pezziardi or Mike Orzen.
And for the first time in an international conference, I will be speaking about what I actually do for a living, as opposed to what what I’m studying or doing research about (and what I have observed during my 25 years experience in IT) when I talk about Enterprise 2.0.
Speaking about what I’ve done
Not to say that my talks are not relevant whenever I discuss about Enterprise 2.0 – hopefully they still are somehow. But I’m really excited with the idea of sharing what I’ve learned while bridging the knowing-doing gap as I lead the project of implementing Lean Software Development for the last 18 months at Lectra, writing an e-book on change management [FR] in the process.
Some may ask why I have not blogged/written/spoken more about my activity. Well, I have always been very careful about what I communicate related to my job to ensure there is a clear line between my own thoughts and my professional activity for Lectra. This has helped me to foster a trustful relashionship with my employer who has let me blog, speak and write for the last seven years without interfering with the contents. It may sound standard agreement in the 21st century, but I know some bloggers who have not been that lucky.
How we used Lean Software Development principles to succeed in scaling Agile Methodologies
This is the presentation of this talk I will give with Laurent Alt the Software R&D Director in the company.
Lectra is the world leader in integrated technology solutions—software, CAD/CAM equipment, and associated services—specifically designed for industries using fabrics, leather, technical textiles, and composite materials to manufacture their products. It serves major world markets: fashion, automotive, and furniture, as well as a broad array of other industries (aeronautics, marine, wind power, etc.).
Lectra Fashion PLM was developed to give companies the visibility to make strategic business decisions and the in-depth value chain control to carry them out quickly. On the way to develop the Lectra PLM solution, Lectra has found the same problems and obstacles that other software houses encounter : delays, quality and costs issues, problems in integrating customer feedback. The Lean Software Development project was introduced to tackle these issues.
The Version V3R3 of our solution was the one we deployed the new approach on the whole project and it was a real challenge due to the scale (70+ people involved) and the number of different technologies involved. Yet we succeed in getting results we never had before : deliver a complete and comprehensive version of our software solution on time with a quality level never reached before.
The aim of this session is to provide attendees with practical advices that worked within our context to scale Agile methodologies to an organization of 70 people split in 6 Scrum teams, and 2 supplementary functions in charge of general functional and UX consistency.
This presentation is organized around the 7 principles of Lean Software Development defined by Tom & Mary Poppendieck :
- Eliminate Waste
- Amplify Learning
- Decide as Late as possible
- Deliver as fast as possible
- Empower the team
- Build integrity in
- See the whole
This is the first step of our Lean journey and we still have a long way to go. Yet, applying these principles allowed us to grab the low hanging fruits and engage the teams. We will provide some tips for the attendees to kick-start their Lean Software Development journey according to these principles.
#hypertextual 