Lean Software Development, Leaders Workshop at Rakuten

Today we have a workshop led by Tom and Mary Poppendieck who are well known lean software development experts.

The workshop is in English without translators. As I wrote the previous blog, our company's official language is changing from Japanese to English.

There are good things and bad things without translators.

Bad things; you may have some difficulties to understand what Tom and Mary said. You may misunderstand them. It is very difficult to ask in English.

Good things; You don't need translators. The translation are expensive and sometimes wrong. Communication speed are much faster than having translators.

Poor English is better than translator's translation . You may disagree with me. But my belief is a dialog with poor English makes you clear and concise understanding between each other. Because you have to think about subject very clearly to translate your idea from Japanese (or your native language) to English. If you don't understand what you are talking, you can not translate it to English.

Anyway, Englishnization gives a lot of opportunities for us. I'm really exciting about this company's transformation.

One more thing. "It is easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission". This is well know agile style or hacker way. I wrote a blog in Japanese. http://d.hatena.ne.jp/hyoshiok/20110205#p1

I learned this quote from Kawaguchi san and he learned from Hiranabe san who attended Mary's keynote speech about lean software development.

This is very exciting moment for me.