ThoughtWorks' Quarterly Technology Briefings

June 2008 - Better, faster, cheaper: Lean Thinking for IT

This event occurred in the past, this is for information only. If you are interested in attending future briefings in Hong Kong, please send your details to Carli Deysel

In the 1980's Japanese industry stunned the world with their ability to produce high quality products at incredibly low costs, triggering a quality revolution. By the 1990's Toyota were developing three new vehicles in the time it took the big three US manufacturers to develop one. In 1991 MIT's Auto Industry Programme and the best-seller that came out of it 'The Machine that Changed the World' revealed why: Lean Thinking.

This briefing will explore the processes, tools and philosophies applied by Toyota Corporation to become one of the most successful companies in the history of the world and it's 7th largest. It will address how lean can be applied to IT, to start delivering real return on your IT investment.

Learn how Lean techniques were used by two of Australia's largest websites to reduce product delivery cycles from over 12 months to every 4-6 weeks, by a large international bank to reduce the time taken to capture project requirements from over 3 months to 2 weeks and by an international financial services company to halve the cost of a 12 month program of work.

Our speakers

Richard Durnall spent his formative years working for Ford Motor Company in their Manufacturing and Supply Chain Systems division, working closely with a number of Lean experts to do battle with the mighty Toyota Corporation (he has the scars to prove it). Following 12 years in the IT industry for major corporations, he joined ThoughtWorks as a Principal Consultant and spends his time working with our global clients to apply and coach Lean principles to improve the software development process.

Martin Fowler started working with software in the early 80's and since then has concentrated on designing enterprise software - looking at what makes a good design and what practices are needed to come up with good design. He has published numerous popular books on Software development, and speaks at many international conferences. Martin helped create the Manifesto for Agile Software Development in 2001 that brought together new development practices for creating software in a lighter, faster, more people-centric way. He is currently Chief Scientist at ThoughtWorks.

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