Lean Climbing

I’m on my way to Colorado for a weekend of outdoor adventures, climbing and mountain biking. As I was looking over the route for the climb (Kelso’s Ridge up Torrey’s Peak and a possible double with Gray’s Peak) I remembered an article I recently read on applying the principles of lean climbing to business (here).

I’ve done a couple 14ers before, so this will be my third and maybe fourth, all with my son. We plan on being lean on this climb. Enough water and food, but not much more. Our timebox is getting down the mountain before the afternoon thunderstorms. 

My current client seems to get lean. As we were working through the user stories for the project, they made the decision to prioritize and pull out the lower priority stories without any prompting from me. With so many of my clients, there are many discussions before they think about taking any stories out of the backlog for the current release. 

I think if I could take my clients on a climb, with each user story represented by a small rock in their backpack, they would soon realize the benefit of keeping it lean. There’s a cost with each user story, and being able to defer some stories means you get up the mountain sooner.