Last night while facebooking I was going through some of the Diwali
moments of my relatives and friends.
Loads of pictures and expressions - with the lamps, rangolis, crackers,
colorful dresses, sweets, and so on! Then I remembered my regular 30-minute early morning walks.
I notice something obvious during my morning walks right after festival days. Well, I see some new folks
on my way. Probably they start or renew their walking regime right after a
festival day. It happens! For example,
Diwali, the festival of lights, offers us a variety of high-calorie sweets that
one can’t resist and it seldom lets us succeed in our attempts to remain
light. We
are heath conscious. Some of us are reactive. And some are diligent.
Aren’t many of us on the same boat? Let me put forward a tingly
question in front of you!
“Do't we want to be lean and fit?”
Who would say no? I
believe every one of us wants to be lean!
Welcome you to the lean gelateria! How about a gelato, instead of the usual ice
cream?
Gelato is made from natural ingredients. Gelato contains
vitamins, minerals, calcium and protein. So, it is nutritious. It has lower fat as compared to traditional
ice cream. It is fresh and tasty! No wonder gelato is liked by everyone from
small children to grandparents.
Gelato has started transforming the ice cream culture all
over the world including India. One can
spot a gelateria in every shopping mall, multiplexes and prime shopping areas
of all major cities in India. Just as bakery is for different types of breads
and cakes, gelateria is for several types of gelato, sorbet, etc. FYI – Sorbet is made of fresh fruit, sugar
and water. No milk or cream. I heard that it has 0% fat and of course, it suits
those who are lactose intolerant.
I no longer witness the thrill among us on devouring
traditional cone ice cream from a roadside shop. A familiar brand of ice cream after dinner
is less than ordinary and one wouldn’t talk about such things with friends and
colleagues!
So, this lean gelateria is for all of you! I am planning to serve you unique flavors
every week.
Nowadays everyone is health conscious. People of all ages
aspire to be active and fit.
Yes, everyone wants to be agile and lean! This includes us and our customers. Agile
methods and lean practices provide benefits. We know that.
Do we know the difference between agile and lean?
Agile methodology is an umbrella term that refers to a set
of methods that are evolutionary, light-weight and empirical in nature. There are several agile methods such as FDD,
XP (Extreme Programming), Scrum, SAFe and DSDM (Dynamic and Systems Development
Method) in practice today. Some of these
(for example, FDD and XP) came into light even before agile manifesto and agile
principles were scripted and announced to the world.
By 2000, the success of agile methods such as Extreme
Programming, and SCRUM inspired the industry.
During February 2001, 17 industry experts convened at ‘The Lodge’ at
Snowbird Ski Resort in the Wasatch mountains of Utah and defined ‘Agile
Manifesto’ and ‘Agile Principles’.
Gradually, the popularity of Agile grew across the globe. Agile gurus and practitioners organized
several conferences, workshops and events to evangelize and propagate agile
methodologies. Lean Software Development
and Kanban spiced up this evolution and got adopted as best practices in Agile
Methods.
In summary, any agile method is a way of developing and
maintaining software and it adheres to agile manifesto and agile
principles. The core of agile is about
delivering working software to customers from the early days of projects at
short intervals or iterations (of every one to four weeks) in a sustainable
pace. Agile teams deliver business value by delivering what matters the most to
the customer in short iterations.
Exceedingly often, in IT industry we manage projects that
need to be executed in a time-bound manner within budget. In such projects, project sponsors and
stakeholders find it valuable to get adequate visibility and predictability at
regular intervals or iterations. Also, considering working software the true
measure of progress and delivering business value to business users at a
consistent pace in terms of high priority feature sets has become
quintessential. Iterative and incremental
development provides an opportunity to practice continuous improvement through
the feedback received iteration-end demos and retrospectives. This leads to the
fact that methodologies that ensure adequate visibility and predictability are
the most sought-after. Agile methods deliver this promise all the time.
Lean?
What is it?
Lean refers to a manufacturing approach or a set of
manufacturing practices developed by Toyota (1950s) and evangelized in the US
and other parts of the world in 1990s.
The founders of agile manifesto and agile principles were
influenced by lean manufacturing. Lean
manufacturing and agile methods follow a similar philosophy.
Lean is not a methodology.
It is a set of practices. Some of
the practices of lean are very unique and may not be found in typical agile
projects. Hence it is worth exploring
this subject area.
You may hear “Lean is about reducing waste!” Let us not settle down with this definition.
I will meet you here next week, with the special flavor of
our gelateria!
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