A little confused about the kanban reference though. When you say that the kanban system didn’t survive the transition from lean to agile, what do you mean by “kanban system”? Do you mean using cards as visual indicators to determine the work to be done, and pulling the cards as required, or something more? Visual management tools to track work and limit the amount of work undertaken at one time have been successfully used in XP since the late 1990s. I was introduced to the technique in 2004 when I first started doing Scrum. Both these dates preceded big-K-Kanban. So I guess there is something else in this reference that I am missing. I admit to still being vague about Kanban.

In general like the idea of meme wombling, and recycling old ideas in new ways. Jurgen Appelo recently remarked [http://www.noop.nl/2011/04/old-ideas-new-words.html] that his Management 3.0 book was a collection of previously presented ideas repackaged for an Agile audience. I occasionally rummage through old (e.g.) theater, spiritual and business books to salvage hidden treasures, my colleague Alan Cyment often shares with me fascinating metaphors and direct concepts he draws from law, social history and psychology… and I once found inspiration in a roundabout This blog post inspires me to look for trash in new places.

As almost all posts on this blog, this was a true cooperation between Chris and me. So, the credits go as much to him as to me.