LEVEL UP AGILE WITH TOYOTA KATA: Beyond Method Wars, Establishing Core Lean/Agile Capabilities Through Systematic Improvement

by Jesper Boeg, Diana Larsen (Foreword), Mike Rother (Foreword)

Have you experienced initial success with your Agile change initiative but found that improvement seems to have plateaued? Did you set out to become Agile but failed to truly understand what it means across organizational levels beyond vague terms like “empowerment,” “high-performance teams” and “trust”? Are improvement efforts based on projects or workshops but failing to become an integrated part of your daily work and culture? Are leaders not given the responsibility and framework to become active drivers of organizational improvement and are Scrum Masters acting more like facilitators than active improvement drivers? Are your improvement efforts grounded in reactive problem solving and good intentions but failing to deliver true and measurable results? All these questions indicate that there is a "missing link" between Agile and its Lean an underpinning of continuous improvement that so many Agilists want but rarely find they can execute. Toyota Kata provides this practical framework, the keystone of culture, that allows an organization to attain that elusive state of continuous improvement. This book is based on the last six years of experience working with Toyota Kata in an Agile setting, helping teams, departments, business units and organizations learn how to set ambitious and measurable improvement goals and work iteratively toward them. Applying Toyota Kata to the context of innovation and knowledge work requires us to rethink some of the original elements. To that end, the book is packed with examples and cases that allow you to move beyond abstract theoretical principles. You learn a lot from mistakes but not all mistakes must be repeated by everybody (and I have made many). “I find myself paying attention and learning again, and I encourage you to do so too.” - Mike Rother, author of three books on Toyota Kata “My electronic copy of the book is full of marginal commentary and highlighted sections. I found so much here to absorb and apply.” - Diana Larsen, Co-founder of the Agile Fluency Model and author “Inspiring, insightful and actionable alternative to the often failing agile transformations” - Tomas Eilsø, Enterprise SAFe coach "This book is by far the most comprehensive and thoughtful approach I have seen to applying Toyota Kata in Agile IT organizations. You will find yourself going back to this book over and over again to mine the treasure trove of experience and knowledge that Jesper has meticulously laid out. In my opinion this text will be regarded as a standard that both Agile practitioners and business leaders refer to in years to come." - Michael Blaha, Director of DevOps Provation Medical "Agile practitioners take By 'mastering' Scrum, Kanban, or SAFe you have taken the first step. Now, read this book to continue your journey!" - Adam Light, Lean & Agile Consultant and Speaker and Toyota Kata coach ”This book brilliantly shows how to apply Toyota Kata in knowledge work. This is a must read for agile leaders” - Håkan Forss, Lean/Agile coach passionate about continuous learning and LEGO

347 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 16, 2019

Reviews

[Bjoern Rochel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started reading Rothers Kata Practice guide first until I hit a point where I thought that what the book describes is way to generic and manufacturing oriented to be applied for my case. It hit me then that somebody probably must have written something about the experience of adapting Toyota Kata to a software development area, specifically also in the context of agile teams.

This is how I came to this one. (Turns out exactly one book exists about that :))

What I can say after working myself through this one is that it contains a lot of good material and inspiration on how to adapt Toyota Kata in order to work with software teams.

What I specifically like about it that it's very explicit about the things they tried, that didn't work, or some important things they only realised while they were already introducing Toyota Kata to teams. Overall this gives the book a very honest and grounded touch.

I also appreciated the huge catalog of examples challenges and target conditions at the end, as well as concrete advice on rollout-strategies. All in all you get the sense that the author not only talks theory, but actually has practiced all of this in real life.

Compared to Rothers Practice Workbook I noticed that this book here is very focussed on the Starter Kata and doesn't delve too much into the Coaching Kata itself. The author points that out in the book himself. Since I own both books, that isn't going to be a big problem for me, but I'm a bit obsessive about these learning opportunities, nerdish you could even say and not everyone might want to learn from two books written in slightly different styles.

But other than that, highly recommended!