Jeremy Pullen is a software development manager at Cisco working on an IPTV settop. His current personal project is doing research to answer the question "How do you effectively listen to customer?" as part of his MBA at Ga State University.
Books to promote thought:
Organizational Patterns of Agile Software Development by James Coplien and Neil Harrison. See Org Patterns.
Product Development for the Lean Enterprise by Neil Kennedy
Modern C++ Design by Andrei Alexandrescu
After doing Agile for a number of years, I'm not so sure that the Lean Programming analogy of software development to manufacturing is the best fit. I'm interested in doing some hands-on experimentation with some of Toyota's techniques for developing products -- which don't follow the manufacturing approach at all. This has largely been triggered by reading "Product Development for the Lean Enterprise" by Neil Kennedy. The biggest difference between Toyota and Lean Programming appears to be a lack of set-based concurrent design within Lean Programming. See Lean Development Process. -- Jeremy Pullen
See original on c2.com 