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I feel like stoking some outrage this morning from the corporate "in the real world" folks: I'm a big fan of Lean thinking. However, I sometimes wonder if we need any of it. Yes, business people like to play with planning, but what exactly is the benefit? 1/8
It's just a game, really, that you play for fun. It has little practical value in an Agile context. 2/8
(Things are different in a waterfall context, with it's opaque processes, high-risk delayed-delivery strategies, and irrational insistance on believing that we can predict what's needed a year or more in advance of delivery.) 3/8
In and Agile world, we work incrementally. If a story is truly important, we can't afford not to implement it. Given that it's not a choice, does it really matter how long it takes? We do need to deploy often, so splitting a big story into smaller ones is important. 4/8
And you need to worry about having enough money around to implement. But if the story is small enough and the teams are stable, that's not difficult to assess. Burn rate is a constant. 5/8
If the story is truly valuable, the value of your product to your users increases as soon as you deploy, so revenue should go up. Happy users and increasing revenue give me the feedback I need to know that I'm investing in the right things. 6/8
Of course, increasing your profit is a good thing, and Lean thinking will help with that by reducing expenses, so I wouldn't throw the whole thing out the window 
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But I can't help but think that a business that focuses on "productivity" is focusing on the wrong thing. Focus on value delivered. 8/8
