Earlier this year, InfoQ China held an Open Party together with Matrix, ThoughtWorks China, Beijing Java User Group, AgileChina Google Group and Beijing Python User Group, etc. The Open Party, running along the lines of an OpenSpace unconference, took place at the ThoughtWorks China office, and there were about 30 people attended. Ning Lu, a consultant from ThoughtWorks, gave a nice speech: Lean Thinking With Examples. He analyzed the biggest obstacle in the way of adopting Lean or Agile, and described how to recognize and reduce waste. This article will summarize the talk from an agile developer's perspective.

The activity started with a simple stand-up meeting, followed by voting on all the topics - we had a lot of wonderful topics that day, including "The growing of open-source community", "GPE", "Mingle", "Erlang", etc. The topics were separated into 3 tracks, and Ning Lu gave his talk on one track. He started with the history of the Toyota Production System and Lean Manufacturing, then tackled the biggest obstacle on the way adopting Lean or Agile: the mind-set which came into being during the period of large-scale production. Ning Lu also talked about how Toyota explored its own production system. He said:

Lean is the technology that can recognize and eliminate waste - activities which don't produce additional value.

1. Inventory - while inventory can avoid inefficient provision, it also creases cost, and makes the company become insensitive to the market. The company might face overstocking as the market requirement changes. Inventory is everywhere. Think about your bookshelf, refrigerator, and work that terminates without any result.
2. Batch processes and waiting in queues - such as the intersections that are always crowded, most of the drivers have to experience "waiting" there.
3. Unbalance - e.g. seasonal sales and periods of slack sales.
4. Complication - if things are much more complicated than you expected, then there must be some waste. For example: a complicated document or process.
5. Focus on "following the regulations" - not all rules and regulations are reasonable, and even so, they might not be valuable to the clients.
   

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