Is Lean better than Agile? Scrum vs XP? Of course it all depends, and all methodologies can only be to some degree beneficial for current situation. And in the future new methodologies will appear, which will better address problems of the day. There can be no single “body of knowledge” which is relevant forever.
“But what about math”, you may ask. It seems to have stable body of knowledge (say, axiomatic set theory). Well yes, but we are solving problems on a different level today, taking as a foundation all that has been proven before. It’s not that the foundation is irrelevant, it’s that our focus is elsewhere, as we believe the foundation is stable :).
Also, there is no “single true” foundation. We may take another set of axioms and start building all over from there. It just depends on a problem at hand which theory is better.
That said, i feel Lean and Agile are both very beneficial methodologies for the environment I’m working in, ant it’s really pity how badly they can be misinterpreted. (“You’re not following the plan! Can’t you be a little more agile?”, “Agile is total and thorough crap. Lean, that’s out thing!”)
