Papers

Improving Lean, Service-Oriented Software Development At Codeweavers Ltd

 Paul Shannon, Neil Kidd, Paul Barrett, Sam Wessel, Christopher Knight

Abstract. Following a successful adoption of lean and agile practices [1] the development team at Codeweavers Ltd has furthered its approach to service-oriented software development for the motor finance and insurance industry. Through iteratively inspecting and adapting their processes over the last twelve months the team members have seen a change from their Kanban-style single piece flow to multiple work cells developing on separate swim lanes on a work in progress board and within fixed length iterations. The arrival of strong competition to their market led to a positive shift towards customer service and interaction with increased attention on lean planning and agility. An improvement in software craftsmanship [2] and a focus on quality were thematic in this second part of their journey. The team members have always found it helpful to reflect on their progress and experiences. They have also come to realise that others within the software community are keen to hear about, and to learn from their experiences. With these motivations, in this paper the developers chart their own observations, improvements and failures over the course of a year.

From Chaos to Kanban, via Scrum

Kevin Rutherford, Paul Shannon, Craig Judson, and Neil Kidd

Abstract. Since late 2007 the software development teams at Codeweavers UK
have been incrementally improving their ability to deliver motor finance and insurance web services. This two-year journey has taken the company from chaos
to kanban-style single-piece flow, including Scrum briefly along the way. This
paper charts that journey, showing the benefits gained from a simple “inspect
and adapt” cycle in which the teams tackled their biggest problem at each stage.
Keywords: agile, kanban, scrum, continuous improvement, inspect-adapt.

Download PDF: From Chaos to Kanban, via Scrum