From sprints to lean flow: Management strategies for agile improvement

Abstract

This paper describes management strategies for continuous improvement in agile software development teams.We have applied these strategies in a Brazilian team, which was born in 2009 and now grew into a headquarter of the company with ninety people. We have currently reached lean flow state with constant throughput, reduced lead time and enhanced quality by cutting bugs rate in half. In a continuous improvement cycle, our management strategies are based on looking at the situation, sensemaking the situation and providing simple responses. We describe how we applied these strategies to learn how to correctly limit work in progress (WIP) and to face challenges with coaching, estimates, team motivation, sprints and pair programming.