





5 thoughts on “TOC and YAGNI

  1. That assumption bothers me a bit.

    First of all, the most common constraint for a company is the market. (About 70% according to G. Kendall in “Viable Vision”.) In that case, unless an agile methodology is used to exploit or elevate the market constraint, it will not deliver any real business value. (Yes, I know agile methodologies are good at doing that, if used correctly. Still, that is one part of agile that often gets left out.)

    Second, if an agile methodology succeeds in moving the bottleneck from the development stage, then what? Unless management has adopted a management philosophy with a process of ongoing improvement, the company will stop improving. Soon after that, it is likely to backslide.

    More and more, I have come to see agile as part of a solution, rather than a complete solution by itself.

  2. Henrik, Yes, I see agile as that part of a TOC/lean transformation that’s specific to the software development department (and it’s immediate environment). I’ve seen several companies who thought that agile s/w dev would solve their problems, but in fact all it did was to highlight the real issues elsewhere in the organisation. Which is no bad thing, as long as going agile doesn’t create a local maximum, and as long as the business is ready to change throughout…

  3. Pingback: why YAGNI acts to EXPLOIT the bottleneck « silk and spinach

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