Lean Enterprise

How High Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale

Jez Humble, Joanne Molesky, Barry O'Reilly

Publisher: O'Reilly, 2015, 317 pages

ISBN: 978-1-449-36842-5

Keywords: Business Development, Lean, DevOps

Last modified: June 14, 2015, 12:04 a.m.

How well does your organization respond to changing market conditions, customer needs, and emerging technologies when building software-based products? This practical guide presents Lean and Agile principles and patterns to help you move fast at scale — and demonstrates why and how to apply these paradigms throughout your organization, rather than with just one department or team.

Through case studies, you'll learn how successful enterprises have rethought everything from governance and financial management to systems architecture and organizational culture in the pursuit of radically improved performance. Adopting Lean will take time and commitment, but it's vital for harnessing the cultural and technical forces that are accelerating the rate of innovation.

  • Discover how Lean focuses on people and team-work at every level, in contrast to traditional management practices
  • Approach problem-solving experimentally, by exploring solutions, testing assumptions, and getting feedback from real users
  • Lead and manage large-scale programs in a way that empowers employees, increases the speed and quality of delivery, and lowers costs
  • Learn how to implement ideas from the DevOps and Lean Startup movements even in complex, regulated environments
  • Part I: Orient
    1. Introduction
      • A Lean Enterprise Is Primarily a Human System
      • Mission Command: An Alternative to Command and Control
      • Create Alignment at Scale Following the Principle of Mission
      • Your People Are Your Competitive Advantage
    2. Manage the Dynamics of the Enterprise Portfolio
      • Exploring New Ideas
      • Exploiting Validated Business Models
      • Balancing the Enterprise Portfolio
      • Conclusion
  • Part II: Explore
    1. Model and Measure Investment Risk
      • Model Investment Risk
      • Applying the Scientific Method to Product Development
      • Principles for Exploration
      • Conclusion
    2. Explore Uncertainty to Detect Opportunities
      • Discovery
      • What Business Are We In?
      • Accelerate Experimentation with MVPs
      • Conclusion
    3. Evaluate the Product/Market Fit
      • Innovation Accounting
      • Do Things That Don’t Scale
      • Engines of Growth
      • Transitioning Between Horizons to Grow and Transform
      • Conclusion
  • Part III: Exploit
    1. Deploy Continuous Improvement
      • The HP LaserJet Firmware Case Study
      • Drive Down Costs Through Continuous Process Innovation Using the Improvement Kata
      • How the HP LaserJet Team Implemented the Improvement Kata
      • Managing Demand
      • Creating an Agile Enterprise
      • Conclusion
    2. Identify Value and Increase Flow
      • The Maersk Case Study
      • Increase Flow
      • Cost of Delay: A Framework for Decentralizing Economic Decisions
      • Conclusion
    3. Adopt Lean Engineering Practices
      • The Fundamentals of Continuous Delivery
      • Continuous Integration and Test Automation
      • The Deployment Pipeline
      • Decouple Deployment and Release
      • Conclusion
    4. Take an Experimental Approach to Product Development
      • Using Impact Mapping to Create Hypotheses for the Next Iteration
      • Performing User Research
      • Online Controlled Experiments
      • An A/B Test Example
      • Prerequisites for an Experimental Approach to Product Development
      • Conclusion
    5. Implement Mission Command
      • Amazon’s Approach to Growth
      • Create Velocity at Scale Through Mission Command
      • Evolving Your Architecture Using the Strangler Application Pattern
      • Conclusion
  • Part IV: Transform
    1. Grow an Innovation Culture
      • Model and Measure Your Culture
      • Change Your Culture
      • There Is No Talent Shortage
      • Conclusion
    2. Embrace Lean Thinking for Governance, Risk and Compliance
      • Understanding Governance, Risk, and Compliance
      • Apply Lean Principles to GRC Processes
      • Map the Value Stream, Create Flow, and Establish a Pull System
      • Conclusion
    3. Evolve Financial Management to Drive Product Innovation
      • Introduction
      • Dancing to the Beat of the Financial Drum Slows Innovation
      • Liberating Ourselves from the Annual Budget Cycle
      • Avoid Using Budgets as the Basis for Performance Measurement
      • Stop Basing Business Decisions on Capital Versus Operational Expense
      • Modify Your IT Procurement Processes to Gain Greater Control over Value Delivery
      • Conclusion
    4. Turn IT into a Competitive Advantage
      • Rethinking the IT Mindset
      • Freedom and Responsibility
      • Creating and Evolving Platforms
      • Managing Existing Systems
      • Conclusion
    5. Start Where You Are
      • Principles of Organizational Change
      • The UK Government Digital Service
      • Begin Your Journey
      • Conclusion

Reviews

Lean Enterprise

Reviewed by Roland Buresund

Excellent ********** (10 out of 10)

Last modified: June 13, 2015, 11:37 p.m.

This is something as unusual as a book that really blows your mind away in new directions.

The authors tries to apply the "standard" LEAN principles as well as the Lean Startup (aka Agile) principles of the IT industry. And unlike many others, they succeed!

In short, a pleasure to read, compared to the many naive books you find out there, that assumes that everything is a startup and that the same principles and way of working apply. Very recommended reading

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