A pretty good summary of Lean, Agile, Scrum

Takeshi Yoshida
12 min readMay 22, 2018
A cornerstone article by Agile Organization Development (https://agile-od.com)

Glossary: Lean, Agile, Scrum, Sprint, Kanban

  • Agile and Lean are technically different things, but it’s okay to consider them similar — they are both modern versions of trial & error; i.e. experimental & iterative approaches for highly uncertain challenges.
  • Lean Manufacturing (Lean TQM) and Lean Startup are technically different things, but it’s okay to consider both as Lean. (More on this here.)
  • Scrum is one of the most popular Agile implementation frameworks. Sprint is a Scrum terminology. It’s what the iteration cycle in Scrum is called.
  • So: Lean ≈ Agile > Scrum > Sprint

Why Lean & Agile?

Because in this changing world of social and digital engagement, we need a better way of doing business and managing organizations.

Lean & Agile are antidotes to the two main causes of dysfunction in modern organizations:

  1. Waterfall project management, and
  2. Functional hierarchical organization structures.

Waterfall Project Management vs Agile Product Development

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Takeshi Yoshida

Chief Coach, Agile Organization Development (agile-od.com) — we are a tribe of change, transformation, innovation experts