Building Awareness with Idea Flow Mapping

Key to an understanding of Lean is the principle of Flow. But in software development, most of the activity is largely invisible — our "material" is an idea, and our "processing" is primarily composed of thinking. Huge quantities of waste in mistakes, rework, relearning, and handoffs usually hide in the process without awareness. At best, we’ve recognized an impedance to flow and have labeled the whole set of problems as "technical debt".

In this session, we’ll take another look at the principle of Flow in the context of software implementation. What is a perfect flow? What specifically is causing impedance? What is the cost of poorly designed code? By improving visibility of the cognitive process during implementation, we can learn the answers to these questions. Janelle Klein will lead an interactive coding exercise using a new tool she developed, Idea Flow Mapping, to build awareness of the cognitive process during implementation.

Join Austin’s Lean Software Development community and Janelle Klein for another lively chalk talk on next-generation software development ideas.

Our gracious sponsor, Compass Learning, will be providing pizza and drinks, as well as their spacious meeting facilities.

Parking is available for Lean Software Austin participants in Compass Learning's parking lot immediately adjacent to Compass Leaning on the North side of the building at the corner of Colorado and 3rd.

Janelle Klein is a pragmatic thinker and creative designer with a passion for improving software development. Currently an active developer and CTO at New Iron, she is dedicated to promoting grassroots community learning and building software talent in the community. As a developer, Janelle has specialized expertise in high-availability systems, data integration, database performance and design, and automated test and deployment strategies. When not coding, teaching or drinking coffee and talking shop, she enjoys painting, gaming, movies and hanging out on the beach with a Mai Tai and a good book.