Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash

Chapter 6. People

A System of Management

“Year after year, Toyota has been able to get more out of its people than its competitors have been able to get out of theirs,”¹ according to Gary Hamel. “It took Detroit more than 20 years to ferret out the radical management principle at the heart of Toyota’s capacity for relentless improvement....Only after American carmakers had exhausted every other explanation for Toyota’s success—an undervalued yen, a docile workforce, Japanese culture, superior automation—were they finally able to admit that Toyota’s real advantage was its ability to harness the intellect of ‘ordinary’ employees.”

Lean is a management system that creates engaged, thinking people at every level of the organization and most particularly ...