Book notes: The Lean Mindset
Tags: books
Published: 2020-06-15 06:59:51

---
title: Book notes: The Lean Mindset
published: true
tags: books
canonical_url: https://danlebrero.com/2020/03/04/the-lean-mindset-summary/
description: Book notes on Mary and Tom Poppendieck's "The Lean Mindset"
cover_image: https://danlebrero.com/images/blog/lean-mindset.jpg
series: Book notes
---

These are my notes on [Mary Poppendieck](https://twitter.com/mpoppendieck) and Tom Poppendieck's [The Lean Mindset](https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Mindset-Ask-Right-Questions/dp/0321896904). 

This book is not an intro the Lean, but contains plenty of examples of how real world companies applied Lean principles.

As the authors mention on the introduction: Do not copy the practices. Develop a Lean Mindset.

# Key Insights

- Stop thinking about software development as a delivery process and start thinking of it as a problem solving process.
- Wrong questions: "How will Lean or Agile increase productivity?"
    - Efficiency is not about more features but **only** the right features.
        - Flow efficiency, not resource efficiency.
        - The way to achieve a software objective within time and budget is to develop **less** features.
    - High speed goes hand in hand with serious discipline and excellent quality.
- Great products come from changing the focus from:
    * productivity to impact.
    * predictability to experimentation.
    * efficiency to decentralization.
    * product to problem.
- To find the business purpose ask: Who are our customers?
* Long term success:
    * Better before cheaper.
    * Revenue before cost.
* [Tragedy of the commons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons) is untrue if there is a self-governing community.
* Reciprocity is the currency of cooperation.
* Do not separate design from implementation.
    * Requirements docs are design.
* Inverse estimation: Each feature has a time constraint determined by its value and market need.
- Centralization due to cost savings/pressure, but if this cost pressure is due to market conditions changing, the company should be looking at innovation.
- [Learn to experiment](#learn-experiment).
- Walk in the shoes of your customers.
- Focus on execution gives best solutions to the problems you are trying to solve, but it will not tell you if they are the right problems.
* Managers should be coaches, expert roles should be teachers.
* Optimist develop software, pessimists run the data centers. <i class="far fa-grin-tongue-squint"></i>
              
# TOC

* [Introduction](#into)
* [The Purpose of Business](#ch-1)
* [Energized Workers](#ch-2)
* [Genuine Efficiency](#ch-3)
* [Delighted Customers](#ch-4)
* [Breakthrough Innovation](#ch-6)
* [Epilogue](#epilogue)

# <a name="intro"></a>Introduction

- Mindset: a mental model of how the world works.
- Great products come from changing the focus from:
    * productivity to impact.
    * predictability to experimentation.
    * efficiency to decentralization.
    * product to problem.
- Do not copy the practices. Developing a mindset is about developing the expertise to:
    * Ask the right questions.
    * Solve the right problems.
    * Do the right things for the context at hand.
- Dual processing theory:
    * Humans have two "minds":
        * System 1: intuition, habit, emotions, fast.
        * System 2: analysis, plans, rational, slow.
- The Fabric of Lean:
    * Purpose of Business:
        * Optimize the whole.
        * Focus on customers: long term success.
        * Douglas McGregor's Theory X:
            * X - people do not want to work and will do the minimum.
            * Y - people are eager to work and want to do a good job.
    * Energize workers:
        * Reciprocity:
            * Treat well workers, they will treat well customers, which will treat well the company.
            * Is local, hence leverage on power of peers, not incentives.
        * Workers want well-framed challenges. 
            * Not too easy (boring), not too hard (discouraging).
        * Regulatory fit:
            * Aspirational: action, experimentation, start ups.
            * Duty: safety, failure prevention, big companies.
        * Constant Improvement.
        * Eliminate waste:
            * Building the wrong thing is the biggest wast of all.
        * Learn first.
        * Deliver fast.
        * Build Quality In.
        * Keep getting better.
        
# <a name="ch-1"></a>The Purpose of Business

- Two theories:
    * Peter Drucker: to create a customer.
    * Shareholder Value Theory: to maximize shareholder value. (Rational economics)
        * US CEO 1976 x36 average worker income.
        * US CEO 2010 x369 times.
- To find the purpose ask:
    * Who are our customers?
* Purpose is master, profit is servant.
* Best entrepreneurs are mission oriented (Todd Park):
    * They could not stand the idea of a world without what they were building.
* Rational work system:
    * Rational people are shrinkers:
        * Try to maximize personal benefit with minimal work.
        * People are inherently selfish.
        * Companies can either:
            * Give very detailed instructions and close supervision:
                * Discourage thinking and improving.
            * Setup incentive system aligned to company interests:
                * Attracts shrinkers (self-fulfilling prophecy).
                * Kill intrinsic motivation.
                * Never fair: kills collaboration.
    * Research:
        * 30% population are selfish.
        * 50% not.
        * 20% undecided: if company assumes they are selfish, they will be.
* Two types of profits:
    * Good profits: the customer feels have received good value.
    * Bad profits: customer thinks he has been cheated: 
        * Reduce customer loyalty.
        * Demoralize employees.    
* Common strategies for success in the long term (Michael Raynor and Mumtaz Ahmed):
    * Better before cheaper.
    * Revenue before cost.
* Cooperative Work Systems:
    * [Tragedy of the commons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons) is untrue if there is a self-governing community.
    * 8 principles of self-governing communities in page 26.
    * Peer pressure is better at controlling bad behaviour than external agents.
    * [The Dunbar Number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number):
        * Size of primate's neocortex is directly related to the number of social relationships.
        * This directly relates to the maximum size of a group.
        * For humans is 150.
        * Pre-industrial social groups:
            * 3-5 very close friends.
            * 12-15 close friends.
            * 30-50 hunting group: colleges who cooperate to accomplish a task.
            * 150 clan: people that maintain stable interpersonal relationships.
            * 500-2500 tribe: same language/dialect.
        * Why?
            * Reciprocity is the currency of cooperation.
    * Rules of cooperation:
        * Work groups should be responsible for its own fate.
        * Rules and norms should match local conditions. People affected should create/adapt them.
        * Peers will monitor each other.
        * External authorities should respect local communities.
    
## <a name="ch-2"></a>Energized Workers

- Fixed mindset: you have a natural talent or you dont.
- [Growth mindset](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C13JC_YP2Q8): with you work, you can learn/do anything.
- Expertise == challenge + coaching + progress + perseverance.
- Optimist develop software, pessimists run the data centers.
- Optimists:
     * Can do attitude.
     * Promotion focus: focus on gains.
     * Pursuing opportunities.
- Pessimist:
    * "Is it safe?"
    * Prevention focus: focus on losses.
    * Prevent failures.
* Managers should be coaches.
* Biggest motivator for knowledge workers on a day-to-day bases is making progress in meaningful work.
* [Dealing with cognitive biases](/2019/02/27/architecture-decisions-beligerent-contrarian-rule-of-three/#content).
* We put too much emphasis on reducing errors and not enough on building expertise.
* Resilience: Chaos Engineering.

## <a name="ch-3"></a>Delighted Customers

- Do not build what the customer ask for.
* Start by deeply understanding the problem through direct experience.
* Do not separate design from implementation.
    * Design by objectives (Tom Gilb in Principles of Software Engineering Management):
        * Give high level measurable goals.
        * Let the team (interacting with the customer) design the solution.
    * Requirements docs are design.
* When product becomes a commodity, design creates a competitive space.
* How designers work?
    * Spend a lot of time watching people.
    * Not alone, but with the whole team, so there are more perspectives.
    * Multiple sketches to share with the team.
    * Understand psychology.
    * Challenge assumptions.
    * Constant feedback.
    * Welcome failed experiments.
* Key design/scientific planning questions:
    * What are the possibilities?
    * What has to be true in order for a possibility to succeed?
    * What experiments can we run to see if those things are true?
* Design toolbox:
    * Establish empathy:
        * Journey map.
        * Adoption chain analytics.
    * Generate possibilities:
        * Sample press release.
        * Impact map.
    * Run experiments:
        * Assumption testing.
        * Rapid prototyping.
        * Learning launch.
    
## <a name="ch-4"></a>Genuine Efficiency

- Efficiency == not more features but only right features.
- Development efficiency is ratio of effort expended to overall product performance.
- Flow efficiency, not resource efficiency.
- Expert roles is of a teacher, helping teams figure out the details themselves.
* Interdisciplinary teams, learning from each other, focusing on customers.
* Inverse estimation: Each feature has a time constraint determined by its value and market need.
* Features described as a high-level goal. Team decide details.
* Start ups: early months, only real progress is learning what creates value for customers.
* Architects and specialists as glue between teams.
* High speed goes hand in hand with serious discipline and excellent quality.
* Deliver fast: most important Lean principle. Other principles are "forced" by it.
* Incomplete product != low quality.
    * It is a valid concern that customers get a bad impression from an incomplete product.
    * If product main selling point is the experience it delivers, delay launch until the experience is right.
* Build-Measure-Learn cycle.
* A feature was not complete until there was data showing the impact on key business metrics.
* How Spotify build products: Think it, Built it, Ship it, Tweak it. Page 119.

## <a name="ch-5"></a>Breakthrough Innovation

- Disruptive new business have a better change of success if they are formed as separated business units, rather than embedded in existing product lines.
- Focus on execution gives best solutions to the problems you are trying to solve, but it will not tell you if they are the right problems.
- Expect front-line people to understand and solve a customer's whole problem.
- Expect local managers to have the wisdom and give them the freedom to do the right thing.
- Wrong questions: "How will Lean or Agile increase productivity?"
    - The path to effective SW development is to develop what customers will love—and only those features.
- The way to achieve a software objective within time and budget is to develop **less** features.
- Path to long term survival:
    - Create variations.
    - Select what succeeds.
    - Repeat.
- If there are no failures, there is not enough variation/you are not trying hard enough.
- <a name="learn-experiment"></a>Learn to experiment:
    - Place small bets.
    - Tolerate failure, but make sure that is:
        * Survivable.
        * Recognizable.
        * Killed quickly.
    - Scale quickly successes.
- Innovative companies are decentralized companies.
- Innovation requires different metrics/processes than core business.
- Centralization due to cost savings/pressure, but if this cost pressure is due to market conditions changing, the company should be looking at innovation.
- Decentralization balance:
    * Too much: fragmented product, complex communication.
    * Too little: workers with no sight to costumers, which removes meaning from work.
* Innovation checklist:
    1. Give product devs a clear line of sight to their customers:
        * Take care that Product Manager/Owner do not divorce developers from customers.
            * It confines creative power of devs to implementation issues.
    1. Interdisciplinary teams:
        * Build respect across disciplines. This is a huge task.
        * Check out compensation system. Does it encourage teamwork?
    1. Disrupt yourself:
        * Find simpler, cheaper ways to solve customer problems.
        * Be skeptical of:
            * High prices.
            * Barriers to access content.
            * Your approach to allocate resources.
    1. Change what you pay attention to:
        * Stop worrying about productivity.
        * Create a process that encourages experiments.
        * Decouple your architecture.
        * Walk in the shoes of your customers.
        * Articulate a high-level purpose.
    1. Develop support systems for innovation:
        * Training, time, ...
    1. Live in the future
        
## <a name="epilogue"></a>Epilogue

- Stop thinking about SW development as a delivery process and start thinking of it as a problem solving process.
- Adam Smith Division of Labor theory:
    * Makes us believe that the most efficient way to get things done is to decompose work into its component parts and assign each component to a specialist.