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The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions
What company doesn't want energized workers, delighted customers, genuine efficiency, and breakthrough innovation? The Lean Mindset shows how lean companies really work-and how a lean mindset is the key to creating stunning products and delivering amazing services. Through cutting-edge research and case studies from leading organizations, including Spotify, Ericsson, Intuit, GE Healthcare, Pixar, CareerBuilder, and Intel, you'll discover proven patterns for developing that mindset. You'll see how to cultivate product teams that act like successful startups, create the kind of efficiency that attracts customers, and leverage the talents of bright, creative people. The Poppendiecks weave lean principles throughout this book, just as those principles must be woven throughout the fabric of your truly lean organization. Learn How To
Start with an inspiring purpose, and overcome the curse of short-term thinking Energize teams by providing well-framed challenges, larger purposes, and a direct line of sight between their work and the achievement of those purposes Delight customers by gaining unprecedented insight into their real needs, and building products and services that fully anticipate those needs Achieve authentic, sustainable efficiency without layoffs, rock-bottom cost focus, or totalitarian work systems Develop breakthrough innovations by moving beyond predictability to experimentation, beyond globalization to decentralization, beyond productivity to impact
Lean approaches to software development have moved from novelty to widespread use, in large part due to the principles taught by Mary and Tom Poppendieck in their pioneering books. Now, in The Lean Mindset, the Poppendiecks take the next step, looking at a company where multidiscipline teams are expected to ask the right questions, solve the right problems, and deliver solutions that customers love.
Start with an inspiring purpose, and overcome the curse of short-term thinking Energize teams by providing well-framed challenges, larger purposes, and a direct line of sight between their work and the achievement of those purposes Delight customers by gaining unprecedented insight into their real needs, and building products and services that fully anticipate those needs Achieve authentic, sustainable efficiency without layoffs, rock-bottom cost focus, or totalitarian work systems Develop breakthrough innovations by moving beyond predictability to experimentation, beyond globalization to decentralization, beyond productivity to impact
Lean approaches to software development have moved from novelty to widespread use, in large part due to the principles taught by Mary and Tom Poppendieck in their pioneering books. Now, in The Lean Mindset, the Poppendiecks take the next step, looking at a company where multidiscipline teams are expected to ask the right questions, solve the right problems, and deliver solutions that customers love.
188 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 20, 2013
33 people are currently reading
837 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
September 5, 2014
Perhaps the title got me anticipating something different -- this book would've been better called "Lean Product Development Examples" I figured that I would learn insightful models and questions to ask teams and facilitate continuous improvement in organizations; instead, it was several very loosely related essays based on product-development case studies. That's not to say those essays weren't helpful -- they were. Also, a nit: Mary at a couple of points creates in my opinion a false dichotomy between "agile teams" and "product teams." She cites some deficiencies of agile, but they appear to be based on limited application of agile rather than agile thinking itself.
February 14, 2018
Compact, good read with some good mindset thinkpieces and little concrete advice. ”Focus on purpose, dare to experiment, optimize the flow” and so on.
February 5, 2019
Una revisión de varios casos de éxito y algunos fracasos de compañías que adoptaron la agilidad.
Los últimos 5 minutos son un tesoro
Buena lectura, pero hay que leer los libros previos de los Poppendieck.
/
A review of several cases of success and some failures of companies that adopted agility.
It's one of those cases where the last 5 minutes are a treasure
Good reading, but read the previous books
Los últimos 5 minutos son un tesoro
Buena lectura, pero hay que leer los libros previos de los Poppendieck.
/
A review of several cases of success and some failures of companies that adopted agility.
It's one of those cases where the last 5 minutes are a treasure
Good reading, but read the previous books
April 14, 2023
I've liked it, specially some of the cases. The short take on the very early Spotify model was refreshing.
It would have been a 4* in its first years. Now, it's a nice window to a very interesting past.
It would have been a 4* in its first years. Now, it's a nice window to a very interesting past.
May 12, 2025
Excellent- formative for my understanding of work in the new era.
January 31, 2021
Light reading with excellent cross citations and a worthwhile message, but not a whole meal on the subject.
December 17, 2013
The premise of this book is great - it promises an insight into creating stunning products and delivering amazing services based on Lean practices. Unfortunately it doesn't deliver on at least half of that promise as I couldn't find any explanation of what Lean really is and how to use it.
My brief research took me initially to Wikipedia, which provided this definition: ‘a production practice that considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination.
So I expected that I would receive some guidance on how to take the Lean principles and apply them. What I found was essentially a set of case studies, explaining how a number of companies addressed five topics:
What is the purpose of our business
How to energise our workers
How to delight our customers
How to achieve genuine efficiency
Delivering breakthrough innovation
These are laudable and interesting topics and certainly have some relationship to Lean. I found the innovation chapter particularly interesting with some practical recommendations about creating an innovation culture in an organisation.
The book is easy to read and the case studies are relevant. The authors created two characters, Otto and Anna, who pose questions throughout the book to help the reader learn the various concepts that are introduced. It's a cute technique that some readers will find valuable.
I'm sure that the authors have a wealth of experience in assisting organisations in adopting Lean techniques. They might assume the reader has a certain level of knowledge and understanding of Lean. They might also assume that the reader can easily take the examples in the case studies and apply them to their own organisation. Unfortunately I don't have this basic knowledge of Lean and often struggled to establish how to apply their case studies to my own work so I was left feeling rather frustrated and unfulfilled.
Reviewed by Danny Williams MBCS CITP
My brief research took me initially to Wikipedia, which provided this definition: ‘a production practice that considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination.
So I expected that I would receive some guidance on how to take the Lean principles and apply them. What I found was essentially a set of case studies, explaining how a number of companies addressed five topics:
What is the purpose of our business
How to energise our workers
How to delight our customers
How to achieve genuine efficiency
Delivering breakthrough innovation
These are laudable and interesting topics and certainly have some relationship to Lean. I found the innovation chapter particularly interesting with some practical recommendations about creating an innovation culture in an organisation.
The book is easy to read and the case studies are relevant. The authors created two characters, Otto and Anna, who pose questions throughout the book to help the reader learn the various concepts that are introduced. It's a cute technique that some readers will find valuable.
I'm sure that the authors have a wealth of experience in assisting organisations in adopting Lean techniques. They might assume the reader has a certain level of knowledge and understanding of Lean. They might also assume that the reader can easily take the examples in the case studies and apply them to their own organisation. Unfortunately I don't have this basic knowledge of Lean and often struggled to establish how to apply their case studies to my own work so I was left feeling rather frustrated and unfulfilled.
Reviewed by Danny Williams MBCS CITP
October 12, 2014
Great book that explains using real examples, the lean thinking applied to product development, software mainly, but not only limited to these.
It has substantially changed my way of dealing with software projects. It has helped me to focus more on the objectives / intrinsic problems to solve, relegating the normal flow of creating software continuously without really asking myself "why".
I recommend this book to anyone in product development (not only software), especially to all passionate developers that sometimes forget "why" we develop software.
“What’s next is to stop thinking about software development as a delivery process and to start thinking of it as a problem-solving process, a creative process.”
And remember:
“There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency something that should not be done at all.”
Passionate developer, Read it now!!!
It has substantially changed my way of dealing with software projects. It has helped me to focus more on the objectives / intrinsic problems to solve, relegating the normal flow of creating software continuously without really asking myself "why".
I recommend this book to anyone in product development (not only software), especially to all passionate developers that sometimes forget "why" we develop software.
“What’s next is to stop thinking about software development as a delivery process and to start thinking of it as a problem-solving process, a creative process.”
And remember:
“There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency something that should not be done at all.”
Passionate developer, Read it now!!!
August 30, 2014
Good evolution and augmentation of Agile.
Well worth it.
Well worth it.
March 25, 2019
Good introduction with experience stories from around the world. The book is short than it looks; about 1/3rd are references, introduction and epilogue.
May 19, 2021
Nice book for the ones who are interested in Tech ... Worth reading
LEAN MIND SET: TAKE AWAYS
• There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency something that should not be done at all
• If you treat workers well, they will treat customers well, and customers will reward the company with their business
• Great products are designed by teams that are able to empathize with customers, ask the right questions, identify critical problems, examine multiple possibilities, and then develop products and services that delight customers
• The purpose of business is to create a customer—to discover a customer need and find a way to satisfy that need
• profits that come from delivering more products that customers value are better than profits that come from cutting costs
• Peer pressure is much more effective than a concept of a boss. Many, many times more powerful
• Customers never buy a product; they buy the satisfaction of a want
Actionable Goals:
• 1. Understand needs.
• 2. Identify knowledge gaps and propose multiple plans for closing them.
• 3. Establish at least one feasible approach.
• 4. Pick the best solution from a system perspective.
• 5. Get the solution working
Expertise:
• 1. Decide to pursue a challenging goal
• 2. Practice under the guidance of a coach
• 3. Push their limits, fail, and receive immediate feedback
• 4. Repeat this over and over again, many times a day, for years
Expertise = Challenge + Coaching + Progress + Perseverance
• Expectancy Value Theory, which says that when pursuing promotion-focused goals, motivation is a function of the likelihood of success (expectancy) and the size of the gain (value)
• For complex, urgent, threatening situations it is much safer to teach people how to recover from mistakes than to focus on making sure that they never make a mistake in the first place
Companies that pursue resiliency through failure injection have come to understand two basic facts:
• Perfection is impossible in a complex system at scale. No matter how low the probability of a failure is, the number of transactions is so large that the only real question is when, not if, a failure will happen.
• It is a lot less expensive to develop the expertise to recover quickly and safely from failure than it is to pretend that failure will not happen.
• The best way to be productive is to be sure first of all that you are doing the right thing. Every bit of time spent “productively” doing the wrong thing is wasted time.
• “If you never fail, you are not trying hard enough,”
LEAN MIND SET: TAKE AWAYS
• There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency something that should not be done at all
• If you treat workers well, they will treat customers well, and customers will reward the company with their business
• Great products are designed by teams that are able to empathize with customers, ask the right questions, identify critical problems, examine multiple possibilities, and then develop products and services that delight customers
• The purpose of business is to create a customer—to discover a customer need and find a way to satisfy that need
• profits that come from delivering more products that customers value are better than profits that come from cutting costs
• Peer pressure is much more effective than a concept of a boss. Many, many times more powerful
• Customers never buy a product; they buy the satisfaction of a want
Actionable Goals:
• 1. Understand needs.
• 2. Identify knowledge gaps and propose multiple plans for closing them.
• 3. Establish at least one feasible approach.
• 4. Pick the best solution from a system perspective.
• 5. Get the solution working
Expertise:
• 1. Decide to pursue a challenging goal
• 2. Practice under the guidance of a coach
• 3. Push their limits, fail, and receive immediate feedback
• 4. Repeat this over and over again, many times a day, for years
Expertise = Challenge + Coaching + Progress + Perseverance
• Expectancy Value Theory, which says that when pursuing promotion-focused goals, motivation is a function of the likelihood of success (expectancy) and the size of the gain (value)
• For complex, urgent, threatening situations it is much safer to teach people how to recover from mistakes than to focus on making sure that they never make a mistake in the first place
Companies that pursue resiliency through failure injection have come to understand two basic facts:
• Perfection is impossible in a complex system at scale. No matter how low the probability of a failure is, the number of transactions is so large that the only real question is when, not if, a failure will happen.
• It is a lot less expensive to develop the expertise to recover quickly and safely from failure than it is to pretend that failure will not happen.
• The best way to be productive is to be sure first of all that you are doing the right thing. Every bit of time spent “productively” doing the wrong thing is wasted time.
• “If you never fail, you are not trying hard enough,”
October 16, 2017
It is a nice read about Lean basic pillars and how companies apply the basic principles. It is easy to read and enjoyable.
If you're new to lean software development or you want to recommend a first read about lean to someone, this is your book. It doesn't go deep in the details, but it motivates a lot to get started and look for more.
If you're new to lean software development or you want to recommend a first read about lean to someone, this is your book. It doesn't go deep in the details, but it motivates a lot to get started and look for more.
March 24, 2019
Loved, loved, loved. 3 loves. In the past year I've gotten stuck in different business and process books. These others may have had some interesting info but the reading, the prose, was not engaging.
The Lean Mindset brought me back. One amazing information. Right on point. Two it's a great read!!
Thank you Poppendiecks!
The Lean Mindset brought me back. One amazing information. Right on point. Two it's a great read!!
Thank you Poppendiecks!
February 14, 2018
Very clear explanation on the few principles related to lean software development
April 20, 2020
Even though I knew some things are right, I never knew why. This book gave me the explanations, why the things are working, and not.
July 24, 2023
This book is amazing when it was first published in 2013. But now it has become a cliche.
Not good, not bad.
Not good, not bad.
March 15, 2017
She knows the business
Mary as expected knows how the innovation and IT landscape works and the book is living proof of that. People will save time and money with her tips.
Mary as expected knows how the innovation and IT landscape works and the book is living proof of that. People will save time and money with her tips.
October 27, 2024
Fantastic. Right on. Bullseye
September 13, 2015
This informative book is a highly-recommended read for anyone who manages, leads, interacts with, organizes, or are basically members of product development teams. Using case studies from actual companies, it teaches how to better satisfy or gain customers, boost team creativity and innovation, improve efficiency, and eliminate wasteful processes. It's mostly targeted for software development but since it's a mindset, the idea is not to exactly copy the practices in the presented case studies, but rather to understand the reason behind those practices, in order to ask the right questions and make the necessary changes in your own teams. So if you're currently involved in process or organizational improvements or are starting to doubt the effectiveness of your own processes or structures but can't pinpoint exactly what's wrong, then reading this book is a good first step.
"The best way to be productive is to be sure first of all is that you are doing the right thing. Every bit of time spent "productively" doing the wrong thing is wasted time."
"The best way to be productive is to be sure first of all is that you are doing the right thing. Every bit of time spent "productively" doing the wrong thing is wasted time."
April 27, 2014
The The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions is a collection of research results and case studies from companies applying lean in product development and delivery. A lean mindset according to Mary Poppendieck is about “developing the expertise to ask the right questions, solve the right problems, and do the right thing in the situation at hand”.
For InfoQ I interviewed Mary and Tom Poppendieck about improving product design and delivery using mental models, incentives and reciprocity, investing in employees and delighting customers. See Author Q&A – The Lean Mindset by Tom and Mary Poppendieck.
For InfoQ I interviewed Mary and Tom Poppendieck about improving product design and delivery using mental models, incentives and reciprocity, investing in employees and delighting customers. See Author Q&A – The Lean Mindset by Tom and Mary Poppendieck.
February 10, 2017
This book is a real change in the way Mary & Tom are looking at the Lean. It's no longer a development process but a product centric view. And everything in this short book is about this change of focus. The text is much more inspirational than their previous book and it's obvious that they will never come back. In this end, it's all about asking the right questions.
ma note de lecture en français ici
ma note de lecture en français ici
June 16, 2014
Great book, initial two chapters are even *striking good*. The true essence of lean thinking & lean mindset. Now I just feel sorry that I haven't read other Mary & Tom's books before. I guess it's high time to feel the gap. The funny point is that it's another book with the description if how lean & innovative Spotify is and to be very honest, it doesn't look like that from their client's perspective ;P
July 10, 2014
An inspiring book on what lean means with a good mixture from own stories and case studies. The examples used show the desired outcome of a lean company (or individual) and how this affects the steps taken. Be aware that there are not many mechanical steps you can blindly follow. You have a lot to do on your own to close the gaps and get on the lean wagon. Therefore it may not the best book to introduce lean thinking and management.
May 11, 2014
Tightly written book about how to approach software development and team work in general for working together on tough technical problems. I like how Mary does not repeat stories from her other books and puts together a compelling way of approaching software development. It would be extra cool if I could work in a place that took her lessons to heart :-(
February 13, 2018
Great case studies and very good notes on the motivational power of progress, productivity vs. efficiency, lean principles and others.
It truly made me say out loud:agile is great but not enough; it also made me wonder what is next, what skills and knowledge/understanding of the world we work in does one have to have to move their company, their team and themselves to the next "local maximum".
It truly made me say out loud:agile is great but not enough; it also made me wonder what is next, what skills and knowledge/understanding of the world we work in does one have to have to move their company, their team and themselves to the next "local maximum".
October 25, 2013
A great book by Poppendieck. Very interesting because the focus is more holistic than just Agile Development. The focus is more on Building the right product, innovation, culture and customer orientation. A very important book to understand how modern companies like Amazon, Google and Apple works.
April 6, 2014
That's a very good book. It cleared my vision about lean thinking and guided my first steps into the pos agile era in software development.
June 14, 2014
Brief, not-dense, and effective. The Poppendiecks continue to sharpen their examples and guidance with each new book.
July 22, 2014
interesting case studies and some good insights
November 24, 2014
Great summary of all thoughts. Now i know that i am on the right track in transforming my organisation
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews