Agile Business Change Blog Thoughts on Agile Strategic Business Change and Agile Delivery

At a company away day last week, Rob H was extolling the virtues of Lean’s Single Piece flow over Iteration-based planning and development.  It provoked a lively debate with Rob’s compelling experience from IPC pitched against Nigel’s views from the Guardian project. It’s difficult to argue that Single Piece Flow does not reduce waste; planning and review meetings are dispensed with and replaced with work in Play Limits and continual process refinement. But is the structure created by iterations necessary to provide adequate focus and control? Conversely, do iterations lead to slop, lower quality and thrashing as the team strives toward the end of the period?

I remain undecided on the subject; clearly both approaches have merits that are better suited in certain situations.  I’m tempted to think that iteration planning provides a focal point for communication in larger teams and that Single Piece Flow will run into issues as projects scale, but equally I suspect I’m being disingenuous. After all, it’s this type of lazy thinking that leads traditionalists to dismiss Agile.

The debate will no doubt continue. Watch this space.