Book Review: The Goal by Eli Goldratt
It may not seem like the most obvious book to review on a blog about agile software development, but “The Goal” has as much to do with become a better developer as it does with improving a factory.
The story is written as a novel, instead of a textbook. It tells the tale of a factory manager who must find a more efficient way to run his factory, or face being closed. This book presents the Theory of Constraints, which is in the same family as Lean Manufacturing, The Toyota Production System, and the works of W. Edwards Deming. Those are also the foundations of much of the Agile development methods.
When I first read this book twenty years ago, I started to think of my programs as a factory assembly line. If you think about the data (raw materials) being entered into a system, then being processed through the different methods and procedures (welded/sanded/assembled), and finally becoming output (finished products). There is a lot that a program and an assembly line have in common.
However, after being introduced to agile development, I saw that there are even more similarities between how to improve the manufacturing process and how to improve software development. The book describes using constantly updating priorities, small batches (iterations), identifying bottlenecks (reviewing the story board), and the fact that optimizing an internal part of the process does you no good if the product is not getting out to market.
It is written as a novel, and there are some parts that I would not regret seeing cut (the whole family strife part). But this is a classic in the field, and something that your MBA managers have probably read. Reading it may provide you with a common language and set of experiences to help you speak with your management and get them on board with agile/lean/scrum/etc. techniques in your development shop.
This is a book that I highly recommend to agile developers. You can get it at Amazon by clicking here