Nowadays, maintenance is the most challenging part of a software project life cycle. It is not only very unpredictable, but it gives a hard time to every software professional who got used to working mostly in development, because it requires a different kind of mindset and attitude. I had been studying old fashioned maintenance teams for 2 years and after that I’ve lead a maintenance team for a year using the Kanban method and Lean thinking. During that time the team managed to stabilize the organization’s maintenance situation and made promising results.
This presentation shows through practical examples how Agile and Kanban methods can help to make a maintenance organisation more stable, predictable and manageable using its five core principles by putting more emphasis on the visualization, measurement and using the feedback properly. They help the project and line management to understand the current status and provide all the necessary data for planning or doing possible counter-actions.
Although Agile and Kanban methods are highly effective, the previously mentioned maintenance stabilisation requires a different mindset from the developers and testers as well. Based on my experience, this kind of mindset can be achieved with the introduction of Lean thinking in the organisation. I’m going to talk about how to coach and help team members to take a determinative role in a maintenance organisation.
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