Search the web
Sign In
New User? Sign Up
leandevelopment · Lean Software Development
  • Members Only
  • Post
  • Files
  • Photos
  • Links
  • Polls
  • Groups Labs (Beta)
? Already a member? Sign in to Yahoo!

Yahoo! Groups Tips

Did you know...
Real people. Real stories. See how Yahoo! Groups impacts members worldwide.

Best of Y! Groups

   Check them out and nominate your group.
Having problems with message search? Fill out this form to ensure your group is one of the first to be migrated to the new message search system.

Messages

   Messages Help
Message #
Search:
Advanced
Lead Toyota Engineer Dies of Overwork.   Message List  
Reply | Forward Message #3080 of 4517 |
Re: [leandevelopment] Re: Lead Toyota Engineer Dies of Overwork.

I thought this was sad but interesting. The lean product development model that Toyota uses rolls the product owner, scrum master, and technical lead into one role, the chief engineer. Mary Poppendeick and I have been talking about how this leadership model might apply in software development too. The issue I have is that the Product Owner is already an overloaded role and an achilles heel for a scrum team. Adding the additional technical and process responsibilities has always struck me as being much too heroic, and not sustainable. It looks like that this may be the case.

Of course I don't have Toyota to blame for my 80 hour weeks, just my OC behavior in trying to be really good at doing lean agile and growing a consulting company. I know I am not the only one on this list who is not practicing sustainable pace... but I should... another opportunity.

Robin.


On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 5:20 AM, David Carlton <carlton@...> wrote:

On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 03:00:43 -0000, "Joseph Little" <jhlittle@...> said:

> PS. Is it fair to hold Toyota accountable for the mental health of
> every single one of its employees? Still, it may be true that this
> death is not just one incident, and that Toyota may be (partially)
> culpable.

Well, a Japanese labor bureau thought that it was fair to hold them
accountable in this case; do you see a reason to second-guess them?
It's certainly not the only story I've heard that makes me think that
the XP practice of Sustainable Pace isn't in complete harmony with
Toyota's practices.

David Carlton
carlton@...



--
Robin Dymond, CST
Managing Partner, Innovel, LLC.
www.innovel.net - www.scrumtraining.com
Ass't Producer, Learning and Education stage, Agile 2008

Thu Jul 10, 2008 3:06 pm

Show Message Option
rdymond1
Offline Offline
Send Email Send Email

Forward 		Message #3080 of 4517 |
Expand Messages Author Sort by Date

Not all is so rosy at Toyota. TOKYO - A Japanese labor bureau has ruled that one of Toyota's top car engineers died from working too many hours, the latest in... 		Robin Dymond
rdymond1
Offline Send Email 		Jul 9, 2008
11:03 pm

Hi, To me Robin's point is a good reminder to us all. Toyota (eg, Taiichi Ohno) never said they were perfect and don't want to be seen that way. We should not...
Joseph Little
jhlittle1
Offline Send Email 		Jul 10, 2008
3:00 am

... Well, a Japanese labor bureau thought that it was fair to hold them accountable in this case; do you see a reason to second-guess them? It's certainly not...
David Carlton
carlton_db
Offline Send Email 		Jul 10, 2008
3:20 am

I thought this was sad but interesting. The lean product development model that Toyota uses rolls the product owner, scrum master, and technical lead into one...
Robin Dymond
rdymond1
Offline Send Email 		Jul 10, 2008
3:06 pm

Unfortunately this is another example of the theory of 'Working Smart, not hard!' failing in the real world. If you do work smart and can timebox your work...
Rich Sharpe
richsharpe90
Offline Send Email 		Jul 10, 2008
3:47 pm

... Learning to say 'No' is hard and something you get better at through experience and seeing/reading articles such as this. However, in this industry most...
Bartels, Mel
Mel_Bartels
Offline Send Email 		Jul 10, 2008
5:40 pm

While I agree that good management has responsibility to avoid waste, and losing a life over a job is an extreme and tragic form of waste, anyone at any level...
James Walsh
jwalsh_00
Offline Send Email 		Jul 10, 2008
11:29 pm

... On the one hand I agree. On the other hand, part of the context to my response to this is seeing stuff like the following: ...
David Carlton
carlton_db
Offline Send Email 		Jul 11, 2008
1:09 am

I think I raised this issue on the list when the story first broke. There's so much we can learn from Toyota, but we also have to understand the context. The...
Steve Freeman
smg_freeman
Offline Send Email 		Jul 12, 2008
2:49 pm

Well said (below). We have to take responsibility for ourselves. Only a child would expect another to have one's own best interest always in mind. Still, a...
Joseph Little
jhlittle1
Offline Send Email 		Jul 11, 2008
4:04 am

Re leadership... I recently posted a link to Mary's talk at Google on this subject. AND...I feel Mary has some very important things to say. That usefully...
Joseph Little
jhlittle1
Offline Send Email 		Jul 11, 2008
3:52 am

Hi Robin, I worked as a product champion for several years at 3M, and these were incredibly fun years. My recollection is that on good teams, overload / ...
Mary Poppendieck
mpoppendieck
Offline Send Email 		Jul 11, 2008
9:37 am

... Delicious! This is an important mind-twist. Ron Jeffries www.XProgramming.com You have to either laugh or cry. -- Bill Rogers...
Ron Jeffries
ronaldejeffries
Offline Send Email 		Jul 11, 2008
11:49 am

Hi Mary ... something ... product they ... Even though I agree with you on this but the opposite is also true and I guess far more prevalant. A lot of people...
Pankaj Chawla
talk2pankaj
Offline Send Email 		Jul 11, 2008
1:00 pm

Perhaps the biggest problem that drives the symptoms that you mention below is that software seems for some reason to get divorced from the overall system and...
Mary Poppendieck
mpoppendieck
Offline Send Email 		Jul 11, 2008
2:18 pm

Well, lean has a principle of not over taxing the system. (Mura is the word used to call out the reverse of that.) It does not take a brain surgeon to see...
Joseph Little
jhlittle1
Offline Send Email 		Jul 11, 2008
3:46 am
< Prev Topic  |  Next Topic >
Message #
Search:
Advanced
Copyright © 2009 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
Privacy Policy - Terms of Service - Guidelines - Help