Agile Kaizen: Managing Continuous Improvement Far Beyond Retrospectives

• Provides a handy description of what Kaizen is and how it translates into a constant quest for performance improvement
• Describes principles and offers tools to unleash the real power of Kaizen in any type of organization, independent from specific markets, products, or technologies
• Includes a detailed description of 39 team, process, and product activities for your retrospectives

Agile teams have been struggling with the concept of continuous improvement since the first Agile frameworks were developed, and still very little has been written about the practice of continuous improvement in Agile environments. Although team retrospectives have been prescribed and some practices have been introduced in order to implement and facilitate them, the truth is that most Agile teams are conducting dull retrospectives that end with a list of things that have been done wrong, just to repeat the same list two weeks later at the next meeting.

Instead of listing hundreds of Japanese-labeled tools, this book gives you practical insights into how to spot improvement opportunities, how to plan for improvement and how to engage everyone in your company in the Kaizen process. In addition, it will also provide you with 27 proven practices and 12 bonus activities to introduce into your retrospectives in order to keep them fresh, creative and exciting, so you can promise a team that, in a year’s time, no two retrospectives will be alike.

This book helps you as a manager, team leader, change agent or consultant in any type of organization to unleash the real power of Kaizen cultures – no matter what kind of organization, market, product, technology, vision, goal or size. It provides you with the background, tools and practical hints on how to engage your organization in a process of continuous quest for new and better ways of performing.

About the Author

Ángel Medinilla’s first experiences with Agile started back in 2005, and in 2007 he started Proyectalis, his own project management consulting company. Today, Proyectalis is considered the leading Agile consulting and coaching company in Spain, offering Scrum training and implementation to a worldwide spectrum of software, telco and internet companies.

Ángel is both a member of the Scrum Alliance and the Agile Alliance. He is a regular speaker and facilitator in Agile events, including XP conferences, Scrum Gatherings, Lean Kanban Europe and several local conferences around the world. His contributions to the Agile community include several presentations on Slideshare, two blogs (Spanish / English), the official Spanish translation of the Agile Manifesto, the Spanish translation of Henrik Kniberg’s Scrum and XP from the Trenches, and his book on Agile Management with Springer.