Photos from Agile Austin March 6, 2012

Bob Wilson,the owner of Industrial Andons and Jidoka Consulting (www.industrialandons.com) presented a overview of the Lean process and conducted an interesting demonstration with Legos.




In the demonstration we had two teams with processing plants scattered throughout the world, or the room in our case. A runner had to move Lego pieces in batches between plants where the Legos were processed for 4, 7, or 10 seconds.









The game emphasized the lean principles of no overproduction and continuous flow. Bob showed a surprisingly simple solution at the end.

Afterwards I had a chance to talk with Bob and asked him what mistakes he sees most often with software companies. He said most software companies spend too much time upfront in requirements gathering and design, and not enough in simple prototypes and discussions with the users.