Lean vs Agile vs Lean-Agile

Introduction

I’ve been in a few discussions lately on some related topics:
* What is Agile?
* What is an Agile coach?
* How is Lean and Agile different?
* You call yourself a Lean-Agile coach, what does that mean?

Being a 3 minute read, this is naturally an extremely shallow description of these concepts. Please take the time to deep dive if these concepts interest you. First two ultra short introductions to what Agile and Lean is, and we will see what rabbit hole we end up in after that.

Agile

Agile is in essence about building better products. Being rooted in the Agile manifesto (2001), it’s specifically about building better digital products. Since then, it has evolved into a forest of techniques, frameworks and a religion of sorts. Agile had an implicit focus on people from the start, and the community has had a growing emphasis on culture and mindset. As a result, ways are being found to apply Agile even to non-digital products or services.

Lean

Lean is a purposeful pursuit of flow. Lean companies are committed to deliver ever better customer value through continuous improvement of both products and processes. It originated most famously from the Toyota production system, bringing together ideas by Henry Ford, W. Edwards Deming and others. What made it “click” for Toyota was understanding the value of factory workers. Toyota enabled workers to make decisions and improvements without asking permission. Toyota had an early respect for people and sustainability in a similar way to Agile.

Agile vs Lean?

Agile is about helping companies build better products. Lean is about improving process with better product quality as the intended outcome. From this perspective, Agile has a somewhat different angle. Agile shines in unpredictable waters. To stay in the car world where Lean originated; Agile would be more at home in the team that designs the car than on the manufacturing floor. Agile has an open ended and exploratory definition of “better”.

Lean is typically applied to a repetitive, predictable process, and aims to improve the process in order to make a better product. This could be everything from building a car to filling out an online form. Better in this context would mean higher quality (as in “closer to spec”), and faster (reduced lead time).

Agile on the other hand focuses less on the process, and more on how can we make a better product. Improving the process may be one of many answers, and building to spec may actually not be the answer.

Lean applies to repetitive processes aiming to produce a new (and identical) product each time. Agile applies to repetitive processes where we iterate on improving one product. There’s a (not so) subtle difference. Instead of building 1,000 cars, we keep improving one car. But could we leverage the benefits of both approaches?

Agile + Lean = ?

Many Agile principles and ideas are similar. A bad process is often one of the reasons behind bad products. This means Lean principles are equally relevant in Agile contexts like software development. Improving lead time still makes sense. Deferring commitment still makes sense. Reducing defects and waste still makes sense. Reducing variability (often) makes sense.

Continuous improvement also makes sense. While Lean strives to improve the process that delivers the product, Agile strives to improve the product itself. Both are important perspectives.

Lean-Agile Coach

What is a Lean-Agile coach then? It’s a person who helps teams and companies build better products in a sustainable way. The Lean part of the title implies that we will also (when appropriate) apply Lean principles in order to improve how products are built. I suspect it’s as simple as that.

I hope this was educational, feel free to reach out to discuss!

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Credit is due to: Geir Amsjø and Christina Kjær Seime who hosted the meet-up where we discussed “What is an Agile coach?”, as well as Mike Burrows (thank you for valuable input on a draft of this post as well), Roy Marriot, Steven Mackenzie, Patrick Hoverstadt and Russ Lewis for discussing this topic on the Agendashift Slack.