150 years Lean and Scrum

The ideas behind Scrum and Lean are anything but modern or newfangled. The foundations were laid 150 years ago. Thanks to the research, I can make things easier for my clients in training and consulting. I can now explain things more clearly. Seeing what our predecessors achieved 150 or 100 years ago without the internet is humbling.

The history of Scrum 

When it comes to Scrum, most people are familiar with the background of Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber, as well as some early members of the agile scene.

• Takeuchi and Nonaka: The Roots of Scrum: https://www.scruminc.com/takeuchi-and-nonaka-roots-of-scrum/
• Roots of Scrum: Object Technology: https://www.scruminc.com/roots-of-scrum-object-technology/
• The Genesis of Scrum.org: https://www.scrum.org/about

The Agile Manifesto is also mentioned in most Scrum training courses. (By the way, the term "agile" relates to the book "Agile Competitors and Virtual Organizations: Strategies for Enriching the Customer" by Goldman, Nagel, and Preiss. Chapter 6 describes how different companies can collaborate to create new products.)

Perhaps some of you have found references to Lean and Toyota in Jeff's stories. 

The history of Lean

Jim Huntzinger has compiled a summary of the origins of lean, which provides background information on the descriptions in the books by Womack and Jones.

• The Roots of Lean: Training Within Industry and the Origin of Japanese Management and Kaizen: https://www.lean.org/downloads/105.pdf 

The idea history of Lean and Scrum 

People don't just come up with ideas out of thin air. They take ideas they know, use and adopt them.

Francis Moon has written a book about social networks of the past that created the technology and things we use today. On page 1 he writes: "We also present evidence that invention is not just a moment of epiphany in a lone genius inventor, but is a culmination of an evolutionary process resulting from a network of people and institutions." /1/ 

He quotes Robert H. Thurston: “… great inventions are never, and great discoveries are seldom the work of one mind. Every great invention is really an aggregation of minor inventions, or the final step of a progression.“ /2, PDF page 17/

The same is true for the ideas behind Scrum. Now, let's take a look at the roles of a Product Owner and a Scrum Master.

Where does the concept of a Product Owner come from?

The Product Owner role is based on the concept of a chief engineer, who is the overall responsible designer of an airplane. Jeff Sutherland was inspired by the chief engineer role at Toyota (the shusa). Toyota created this role when Tatsuo Hasegawa joined the company after WWII. He was an aircraft engineer before that. After the war, Toyota hired 200 aircraft engineers for this purpose. Aircraft designers had a unique approach to design. They worked with trade-off curves. These curves captured knowledge about the characteristics of materials and processes used.

The engineers were inspired by Wilbur and Orville Wright. Their journals and letters contain a great deal of data and curves resulting from their experiments. The Wright brothers learned this method from Otto Lilienthal, who learned it from his professor, Franz Reuleaux. Thus, the concept of a Product Owner has a long tradition (see figure 1).

Fig. 1: Idea history of the Product Owner

The Product Owner role and its approach are similar to those of Lean Product Development and Set-based Concurrent Engineering. 

Where does the concept of a Scrum Master come from? 

The Scrum Master role was inspired by Taiichi Ohno, who was responsible for production at Toyota. If you go back in time, you will discover the TWI (Training Within Industry) program. This famous series of trainings helped the United States produce enough airplanes, cars, vans, and ships during WWII to combat Nazi Germany and Japan. The program consisted of several training sessions aimed at preparing people for their jobs, improving job relations, and enhancing work processes. The TWI program was later revived in Japan. Ohno was a TWI trainer, too. Channing Rice Dooley, the mastermind behind the TWI program, was also responsible for training craftsmen for the army during WWI.

Dooley was part of a vibrant global scientific management community. At the end of the 19th century, factories began to grow in size. Entrepreneurs, engineers like F. W. Taylor, and accountants discussed how to organize larger companies. The scientific management community had good ideas and shared from globally. These people worked closely together with the psychologists of their time.

Fig. 2: Idea history of the Scrum Master (TWI, Lean)

 

Fig. 3: Idea history of the Scrum Master (Scientific Management)

The Scrum Master work is related to TWI Job Instruction or Toyota Talent, to TWI Job Methods, A3 Reports or Toyota Kata.

All these roots and connections are well documented. 

Lean, Scrum and Agile have common roots

Sometimes I hear people asking: 'Is it better to be lean or agile?' This question does not make sense. Underpinning both 'lean' and 'agile' are two fundamental questions:

• How can we create great products that customers love?
• And how can we improve our ability to deliver, especially if we don't have more people, time, money or materials?

Different methods are used in different business domains. Cars are different from software services, for example. You cannot compare the production aspect of lean thinking with the product development aspect of Scrum. It's like comparing apples with pears.

Now you have a better understanding from the concepts behind Lean and Scrum.

Literature

• /1/ Moon, Francis C.: Social Networks in the History of Innovation and Invention. Berlin Heidelberg: Springer Science & Business Media, 2013. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-94-007-7528-2 
• /2/ Thurston, Robert Henry. A History of the Growth of the Steam-Engine. Vol. 24. D. Appleton, 1878. https://ia600305.us.archive.org/27/items/popularsciencemo12newy/popularsciencemo12newy.pdf