At the heart of what we teach in our courses are the principles behind the practices. Why is this important? Because we believe that you must understand why the practices work; why they make sense. It’s the principles that drive the practices. A lean thinking mindset is vital in the application of any agile adoption program. Ultimately, we must always be ready to inspect and adapt our practices. But never our principles! Those are inviolate. It is those principles that allow us to make sound decisions. We need a set of criteria in which to judge our decisions as good or bad or better or worse. These lean principles (along with Mary Poppendieck’s Lean Software Development principles and the Agile Principles) are the foundation on which a good set of agile practices are built.