Kanban

I found this excellent article while researching Kanban, Lean, Agile, etc.

Lean development came into focus for me after a comment by Adam Monago about how they were using Lean internally at ThoughtWorks Studios. What I particularly latched on to was the concept of a work pipeline that was continuously being balanced rather than a product backlog + iterations + release plan + estimation pain, etc. (these are my inferences, not Adam's statements)

Given that back ground, the one of the appealing statements that Karl Scotland made in his article was:

The consequences of using a kanban system are that the Product Backlog can be eliminated, because the immediate queue is the only work of interest, timeboxed iterations (i.e. Sprints) can be eliminated, because work is pulled as necessary, and estimation can be eliminated, because work is not planned into iterations.