Lean vs Agile vs Design Thinking

What You Really Need to Know to Build High-Performing Digital Product Teams

By: Jeff Gothelf

Narrated by: Mike Norgaard

As companies evolve to adopt, integrate, and leverage software as the defining element of their success in the 21st century, a rash of processes and methodologies are vying for their product teams' attention. In the worst of cases, each discipline on these teams - product management, design, and software engineering - learn a different model. This short, tactical book reconciles the perceived differences in Lean Startup, Design Thinking, and Agile software development by focusing not on rituals and practices but on the values that underpin all three methods.

©2017 Jeff Gothelf (P)2017 Jeff Gothelf

Makes difficult concepts very simple to understand

He explains concepts very well. Makes it easy to understand and explain to others. I would recommend this to any organization planning to implement scaled agile framework.

Good idea for a book, bad execution.

This book is remarkably short and lacks substance. While the idea of comparaing and finding a synthesis of all three methdologies, the reality is that the book falls short of explaining the how. All in all, great idea but there is not enough material in the book to warrant its price tag and the idea of synthesis is not in depth enough for anyone who is already in the field currently.

straight to the point executive summary

straight to the point executive summary helps introduce the topics to those coming from classic management

good overview but fails to distinguish

I liked the quick overview and I think the author is knowledgeable in the concepts. I was hoping for a more deeper explanation on the topics. I have read many books on each topic too quickly so all the concepts have merged into one single perspective. I needed to understand how to distinguish one from another and this book was not the one for that. he does a good job of explaining how they work together though. his 10 step process is not a revelation but decent start point.

bottom line: if you want a real quick overview this is worth it.

Quick but accurate reflection of common problems

good introductions to concepts and goals of lean/agile/design thinking; good overview of how these world views conflict in actual making of software. A bit hamfisted on metaphors or examples, and a bit out of touch with more technical descriptions (misunderstanding of 'devops' in my mind, but to little consequence or detriment.)

Very short read, may be best when you have quite a few credits stacked up, or are really itching for a quick overview of concepts. It's short length has also served very well in making it approachable to recommending to others, and great tool for putting people on same page before discussing concepts or proposed process changes.

It's brief. Now go read Sense and Reapond

I liked this overview. I consume different media types and this audio version offers a simple review of these methods. It's not intended to be a deep dive. Rather, it's brevity is a super practical teaser to Gothelf's thinking.

My favorite line.... Customers don't care about your approach, they care about great products and services that solve meaningful problems in effective ways.

Based on the description I thought it was more than it was

Honestly, this is a good book for understanding these concepts. I felt it didn’t offer a guidance of complimentary collaboration between everything the way I would have liked. Perhaps it is because I have a lot of experience with each of these concepts, so I found it very basic at times. The performance was great. Honestly it had the ton and approach of a really sound podcast of these business practices for software development.

Great book and intro to the topics

Great book and intro to the topics highlighting the similarities and differences. Good into for anyone starting out and those in the game.

Must Read for value-driven teams

I have long been frustrated by how Agilists, Lean Product coaches and “D Thinking” advocates always seem to be competing around who’s methods are best. This book describes the flaw in that thinking and provides a path toward using all of them together to create high performance teams to drive value to the user.

Great quick read

No silver bullets here, but nice quick listen about some ways to reconcile these various frameworks/techniques