In the webcast, Corey Ladas discusses lean thinking in software development, Deming and quality, customer pull vs Kano model and gemba.

• 7 Practical Ways to Respect People by Ron Pereira – “Some think that to be respectful you can never disagree. This is ridiculous. My old boss at Nokia used to tell his management team that if all 8 of us agreed he had 7 too many people in the room. So true.”
• Is Brainstorming a Waste of Time? by Mark McGuinness – “For Sutton, the problem isn’t with the technique but the way it’s applied: ‘when brainstorming sessions are managed right and skillfully linked to other work practices, they can promote remarkable innovation.’”
• The Remarkable Chief Engineer by John Shook – “So the Chief Engineer has no choice but to lead by the soft skills of true leadership. By soft skills, I am referring to the suite of skills written of in books about leadership or management books and taught in leadership training – characteristics such as ‘leading through influence’ or ’servant leadership’ or ‘win-win negotiating’.”
• Yet another form of muda by Dan Markovitz – “You’ll learn, among other things, that making an ironclad commitment to spend 15 or 20 minutes each day with your assistant is essential. Your assistant is there to extend your reach and capability to effect change in the organization.”
• Eliminate Management By Objectives by Jonathan Becher – “It’s a vicious cycle. MBOs that measure outputs, rather than impact, might actually cause outputs to decrease. Which encourages more bad management by bad objectives. Instead of the vicious cycle, let’s follow Deming’s advice and substitute leadership for MBOs.”
• Why Lean? Start from Need! by Mark Graban – “A patient could have been harmed because we couldn’t readily find suction tubes when they were needed… so by implementing 5S, kanban, and standardized work, we’ll make sure that NEVER happens again.”
• The Decline and Fall of Agilists by Jurgen Appelo – “Agile has never been some specific set of practices. Nowhere on the Agile Manifesto does it say that you have to do automated testing, pair programming, refactoring, or whatever.”
• Hire People You Can Trust to Do Their Job by John Hunter – “They can be expected to do what is needed when the proper conditions are set, including a clear understanding of what is needed, communication of current conditions and changing needs, a shared understanding of roles”

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