This page contains a collection of publications, short self-published booklets, and blog entries on Lean, Agile, process improvement, and software quality. I hope you find something helpful.
- If you’re looking for just publications, see my Publications page.
- If you want to see only blog entries, visit my Blog.
Quality and Throughput Improvement Techniques
- “Causal Map Fishbone Diagrams – A Better Way to Find Root Causes“. 2020.
- The Improvement Kata: Lean Meets Annual Planning. Invited Speaker Talk at Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference. October 2015. Slides
- “Success Cards – Making Improvements Visible“: An Improvement Kata topic.
- “The One-Hour Retrospective“. Process improvement for sprints and other short cycles. 2013.
- “Five Whys Cause and Effect Analysis: Finding a Solution Quickly“. 2013.
Visual Planning Boards and Kanban Boards
- “Simplify Your Management with Visual Planning Boards“. A Visual Planning Board can help your small business, nonprofit, or just you manage your work more easily.
- “Visual Planning Boards for Small Groups“. Techniques for using Visual Planning Boards with a work team or small group.
- “More Techniques for Visual Planning Boards“. Use your Planning Board to balance workload across your staff.
- “Visualizing Workflow in Your Organization“. A Planning Board can help you get work done faster.
- “Planning Boards for Rapidly Changing Work.” Using a Visual Planning Board to cope with rapidly changing work during an eldercare crisis.
Agile and Lean
- “Velocity – A Squishy Measure“ – June 2017.
- “How Lean Sees Agile“. Lean explains why agile works – and how agile can be adapted to large multi-team projects.
- Lean vs Agile: Friend or Foe? Lightning Talk at PNSQC Meetup April 2014.
- Lean in The Test Lab. Proceedings of the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference 2013.
- Fix Your Agile Project by Taking A Systems View. Agile Connection. July 23, 2013.
- “Cadence: Increase Efficiency with a Rhythm“. How cadence can speed up your projects and simplify your life. 2013.
- “Cadence in Agile Projects: Sprint Length, Integration Frequency, and Other Matters of Rhythm.” What Lean can tell us about ideal sprint length. Rose City SPIN March 2013.
- “Cadence for Rapid Learning Cycles“. Published in the Lean Product Development Resource Center. 2013. The concepts of cadence applied to Lean Product Development.
- “Cadence: The Trade-off Between Holding Cost and Transaction Cost”
This paper shows you how to calculate the best cadence for a recurring activity. If you want to see the actual math behind the rules-of-thumb for cadence, this is the paper to read. - Introducing Fast Flexible Flow at HP. Lean Product and Process Development Exchange 2012.
- Kanban: What is It and Why Should I Care?. With Landon Reese. Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference 2011.
- Lean System Integration at HP. Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference 2010.
- Evolution of Software Lifecycles. Panel on Evolutionary Delivery. Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference 2005.
Improvement Kata
Software Quality and Testing
- “Talking About Quality“. Ensure quality with your skills involving non-functional requirements. Proceedings of the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference 2018.
- “Build Quality In – Don’t Test It In“. How to customize your quality strategy for peak effectiveness and efficiency.
- Proceedings of the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference 2018..
- Lean in The Test Lab. Proceedings of the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference 2013.
- Building in Quality. Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference 2007.
- Ten Tips for Home-Baked Tools. Rose City Software Process Improvement Network. June 14, 2007
- New Tricks with Old Tools: Using Data Flow Diagrams in Test Design. Proceedings of the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference 2005.
- But Will It Work For Me?. Proceedings of the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference 2002.
- Tester to Developer Ratios. With Sue Bartlett. Proceedings of the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference 2001.
- Step by Step Test Design. Software Testing and Quality Engineering. September/October. 2000
- Divide and Conquer – Making Sense Out of Test Planning. Proceedings of STAR West. 1999.
- Rework Statistics for Several Projects. Proceedings of the Annual Oregon Workshop on Software Metrics. 1992.
Other Useful Sites
Whittier Consulting’s Lean Product Development Resource Center: home of many useful quick references (called “knowledge briefs”), templates, and examples for all aspects of Lean Product Development.
The Scaled Agile Framework. A collaborative effort by several major players to provide a model for large-scale agile in the enterprise. The authors include Dean Leffingwell and Alan Shalloway.
Mike Rother’s Improvement Kata. An iterative process improvement technique which incorporates overall goal-setting, use of the scientific method to decide what to do, and small batch sizes into one coherent package.