"Think big, act small, fail fast; learn rapidly" is the famous pitch out of the book "Lean Software Development of Mary and Tom Poppendieck (2003). Very often quoted and more often misunderstood or badly implemented. Lean software development is often embraced as methods (SCRUM, XP, SMART, DSDM, OPEN-UP, IAD, etc.) to avoid the traditional "hard work" to properly design and document the solution before building it but instead "learn on the fly".
Well, one of its valuable characteristics of Lean is indeed the qualitative growth of the team and their work due to advancing insight by test software early and implement it fast. However, that does not mean "fire at will" with some ideas originating from the latest technology.
"Think big" points to stay close to the issues to address, looking at them as a whole and make sure the business case remains solid.
"Act small" means one should keep the boundaries of the system and the development process crystal clear. Complicated communication with other organisational entities and their applications should be avoided as much as possible despite of the promising benefits (which are usually very hard to get). "Normalizing" your architecture and your processes is maybe challenging but very rewarding at the end of the day.
"Fail fast" should tempt you to test everything you produce as soon and solid as you can. From functional designs to actual code. That includes all integration aspects, both code and deployment aspects. Only a complete solution will address the business case properly.
"Learn rapidly" challenges you to stay close to the changing world. Predict and plan the future but establish the accompanying measurements and respond accordingly. And make sure architecture and code is change tolerant.
But the real issue with Lean is having people who can think and act lean. It's more behavioral than a cookbook of activities to follow carefully. The latter is just conditional (but inspect and adapt) to make sure people can focus on the real things of life. Improvement, change and innovation.
"Think big, act small, fail fast; learn rapidly" is the famous pitch out of the book "Lean Software Development of Mary and Tom Poppendieck (2003). Very often quoted and more often misunderstood or badly implemented. Lean software development is often embraced as methods (SCRUM, XP, SMART, DSDM, OPEN-UP, IAD, etc.) to avoid the traditional "hard work" to properly design and document the solution before building it but instead "learn on the fly".
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