Don’t Choose – Combine Your Practices

I have been “preaching” about why you should combine software engineering management practices for a long time (almost all of my presentations end with this as a call to action).  A lot of people get stuck in the religion of their current practice (or the practice that they see in the industry that holds the most promise).  Today Scrum is hot.  Kanban techniques are also gaining traction – especially in the blog/twitter spheres.  I’ve been a big proponent of Feature Driven Development in the past – and there are a barrage of other techniques stemming from eXtreme Programming, Test Driven Development, Behavior Driven Development … the list goes on.

These days, I have to admit I’m very happy to see more emphasis on Lean techniques, such as Kanban systems, in the management of software engineering teams.  Don’t get trapped in the Kanban religion though…it’s too easy.  I’m also a big fan of something I’ve called “Feature Driven Scrumban Development” – which demonstrates the merging of a few different mindsets.  I actually used to call it “eXtremely Lead Feature Driven Scrum Based Development” – however, that was just too much of a mouthful ;-)  I made it up to prove a point – what we need to be “without form” – similar to the end goal of a practitioner of martial arts – when it comes to applicability of team and project management techniques.

If you’re interested in some of these concepts go out and read this book:

Scrumban - Essays on Kanban Systems for Lean Software Development

http://www.amazon.com/Scrumban-Essays-Systems-Software-Development/dp/0578002140

The book is easier to read if you are already familiar with Scrum and FDD and even a lot of Lean concepts…