Christoph Steindl, IBM

Christoph Steindl is a Senior IT Architect & Method Exponent at IBM in Vienna, Austria. He has been working for IBM since 2000 on a variety of software development and systems integration projects. His areas of expertise are in application develop-ment, software engineering, and methodologies. He is very knowledgeable about various agile methodologies and has given presentations about topics like Lean Software Development, Agile Project Management with Scrum, Supporting XP with Scrum, Distributed Agile, Test-Driven Development, Practical Use-Case Modeling, and Estimation in Agile Projects. He is an appointed lecturer at the Johnannes Ke-pler University in Linz (Austria) and at the University of Applied Sciences in Hagenberg (Austria), as well as a Certified ScrumMaster. He holds degrees for Computer Science and Mechatronics and a doctoral degree in technical sciences from the Johannes Kepler University in Linz.

Presentation: "Applications of Lean Software Development"

Track: Agility in Perspective

Time: Wednesday 13:00 - 14:00

Location: SAS Dania

Abstract: Lean Software Development is not a methodology for developing software in a lean way. It's more a set of principles and tools (= ideas) that you should understand and consider actively when you decide about how you are going to do something and that you should always keep in mind during the actual doing. I have used LSD in a couple of situations:

First - of course - in presentations as an eye opener referring to the vast amount of experience of Lean Manufacturing, paving the way for agile ideas. It's easy to argue against new ideas, it's much more difficult if they have proven to be successful.
Second, when thinking about estimation in agile projects and comparing the agile approach to estimation with more traditional approaches, I tried to understand the reasons and forces that make the agile techniques successful. The principles and tools from LSD proved to be a valuable check-list and helped me understand why one approach works and why another one could not possibly work in an agile environment. I've done the same for other aspects of development, e.g. working with requirements
Third, when thinking about how to develop a Service-Oriented Architecture in an agile way, it was inspiring to consider the principles and tools one by one and discuss with colleagues how these ideas apply to developing SOAs. I will do the same whenever I explore new fields and want to build on my own and other people's experience.
Forth, when thinking about how to transform an intellectual agenda (like IBM's "on demand") into a behavioural agenda, i.e. how can you break down an abstract vision into something more concrete that you can use in your daily decisions.

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