Who this book is for
Given Scrum's and Agile's roots in the software industry, this book will help IT practitioners, in general, learn how to work in a Lean-Agile environment. In particular, there are two critical areas in IT addressed within this book:
Coordinating the activities of multiple Scrum Teams working in collaboration to develop a single integrated product
Identifying the hundreds of practices that support software engineering and cross-team collaboration from both the Scrum and Lean-Agile perspectives
However, as mentioned in the previous section, the wide-scale adoption of Scrum and Lean-Agile practices supports enterprise-wide needs to operate with agility. Yes, virtually all modern businesses must operate as software businesses. The necessity of the integration of software-based product enhancements is the reality of competing in our modern digital world. Therefore, business agility requires the implementation of Lean-Agile practices on an enterprise scale, and not just within software development groups.
This book goes well beyond the scope of Agile-based software development practices to encompass agility across all value streams. A value stream is simply the set of activities within a business process that add value from a customer-centric perspective.
Several of the leading Lean-Agile practices covered in this book, provide extensive guidance in these areas. As a result, this book helps both organizational staff and executives across all domains and roles to understand modern Lean-Agile practices, and explains how to choose the options best suited for their particular contexts.
Corporations can hire consultants and send their people to various Scrum and Lean-Agile courses. But they may want to start their investigations here and have their executives and Lean-Agile team members read this book first to save a lot of time, effort, and money.