A short note in Kent Beck's Extreme Programming Explained on a CFO's comment, that XP was similar to the Toyota Production System (TPS) sparked my interest to read more about the TPS and reconcile it with some firsthand experience working as a supplier to Toyota. I have now finished Jeffrey Liker's "The Toyota Way" and can see very well, how the success of agile software development compares to lean industrial processes exemplified by Toyota.
Further investigation led me to this report on how Fujitsu Software Technologies had successfully implemented agile processes under the TPS angle, and I have now shortlisted the Poppendieck's "Lean Software Development" book next on my list.
My goal is to reconcile the benefits of the (remote) open source development model and (co-located) agile/TPS model, as we do at db4objects, in a paper and to thus provide a more structured approach to the software process improvements pioneered by db4objects and other open source projects.
I want to show through thorough analysis and learning by doing at db4o, that open source is a better production model for software (and a better distribution model, but that's a different topic).
I invite anybody to share their thoughts with me and to carry the TPS structures into the db4o Project and vice versa.