With last month's announcement of the Lean Software and Systems Consortium at the 2009 Lean & Kanban Conference, it seems fitting that this month's book is about Lean Software Development and how Agile development practices support Lean Thinking.

The Art of Lean Software Development: A Practical and Incremental Approach is an introduction to Agile software development practices through the lense of Lean thinking. The first thing you need to know about this book is who its target audience is [...] from the publisher's website for the book: "This book has a very specific purpose -- it is aimed squarely at the complete novice. The one who has been hearing all the Lean-Agile buzz, really knows nothing about it, and wants to learn more quickly to decide if they want to dig deeper (without having to read a 500 page tome)."
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Now that we've finally gotten that out of the way ... The Art of Lean Software Development actually succeeds at its intended purpose. It is a very "lean" introduction to the subject of applying lean thinking to software development. (You can see for yourself by looking at the online excerpts of chapter 2 and chapter 4.)
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I like just about everything that The Art of Lean Software Development has to say. It is a bit of a dry read but a very quick one. ... For those more interested in the abridged version or the line-manager's equivalent of a technical overview, The Art of Lean Software Development is a very quick and easy read that successfully introduces the history and essentials of Lean and Agile software development from a Lean thinking perspective.