A lot of popular folks come to Yahoo! and hang out. There are experts, authors, musicians, luminaries, – giving talks, running workshops, attending conferences, performing, and being a presence on the campus.

Our own group has had people in. I’m not sure who they all are. I hear there was Mary Poppendieck, who’s suggestion of eliminating waste may have been interpreted by a few as meaning some roles could be considered redundant. Seems a shame.

Since I’ve been around, there has been two people we’ve brought in. The first was Jim Coplien, who shook things up a bit. People are still referring to his presentation on agile architecture. We have it on video some where. I wonder if I can make it public? Worth finding out and better than me writing about it now.

Today David Anderson came in, and talked about industrial-strength, agile complimentary, product development system. This system is based in the Theory of Constraints (TOC), where customers pull value through the system. It takes advantage of mathematical fact and scientific backing in queuing theory and Little’s Law. The system is monitored real-time with an ever-changing visual board of all work in progress. Product is developed in a cadence, where success happens with enthusiasm. David calls it a Kanban System for Sustaining Engineering, and with a subtle change, it is a system for software engineering.

David Anderson Presentation Part2

Slide Deck in the video