Lean Integration: An Integration Factory Approach to Business Agility

Preface

By John Schmidt

I have been practicing Lean Integration for over 15 years. I just didn’t know it.

Over the past 30 years I’ve learned various Lean practices such as kaizen (continuous improvement) and closely related methods such as Six Sigma and agile software development. But I didn’t fully understand Lean as a system until I studied it more thoroughly in 2008. The surprising discovery was that I had in fact been applying Lean principles for many years without formally identifying them as such.

The reality is that Lean principles such as customer intimacy, continuous improvement, seeking quality perfection, and developing effective teams are common sense. David and I don’t have a monopoly on common sense, so we expect that as you read ...