Many organizations are using agile frameworks to enhance their solutions delivery. Others are leveraging lean to improve their processes and practices. But how many organizations have combined both a large agile adoption and an enterprise lean initiative to become a flexible, responsive organization built on continuous improvement? And what happens when the implementations of the agile and lean practices conflict?
Joe Astolfi and Greg Dartt are members of the Agility Services and Coaching Team at American Electric Power (AEP), a Fortune 500 utility company. They will take you on a journey of AEP’s agile adoption in IT over the past 9 years, and its convergence with AEP’s enterprise-wide lean implementation. You will learn how the logical union between the two disciplines turned into a battle of philosophies at the team level. As tensions rose between the agile and lean experts, ways to resolve the conflict were required and developed for the continued growth and success of the organization. And on the positive side, you will learn how the implementation of lean greatly increased the adoption of agility across IT.
Learning Outcomes:
* Learn where the agile and lean implementations conflicted at AEP, and the techniques used for resolving those conflicts
* Understand which lean practices were especially damaging to agile values and principles, and how the heightened tensions were diffused
* Learn how the agile adoption across IT was accelerated by leveraging lean practices, specifically a lean management system
* Explore the way lean language made agility more accessible to management and business partners
* Identify ideas you might try at your organization to gain greater momentum in your agile transformation
