David Anderson is a software development consultant and author best known for creating the Kanban Method — the application of kanban pull-system thinking to knowledge work, particularly software development. His route from Theory of Constraints to software development runs parallel to Ching's, arriving at similar destinations through different intellectual paths.
TOC to Kanban
Anderson's development of the Kanban Method drew explicitly on eliyahu-goldratt's Theory of Constraints, particularly the concept of managing flow through a system by identifying and protecting the constraint. Anderson applied queueing theory, WIP limits, and pull scheduling to software development teams — formalizing practices that many teams had been arriving at informally. His 2010 book "Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business" became the foundational text of the Kanban Method.
Where Ching's primary contribution is toc-for-software-development through narrative pedagogy and the focccus-formula, Anderson's contribution is methodological: a specific workflow management system with explicit policies, visual boards, WIP limits, and evolutionary change principles. Both approaches share the Goldratt inheritance of treating the constraint as the primary lever for improvement, but they address different layers of the problem. Ching focuses on project-level decision-making and rescue scenarios; Anderson focuses on ongoing workflow management at the team level.
Shared context
Anderson and Ching both operated in the Scottish Agile community during overlapping periods. Both spoke at lean-agile-scotland events, and their parallel work attracted similar audiences. The fact that two practitioners arrived at TOC-informed approaches to software from the same upstream source — without direct collaboration — is itself evidence of the generativity of Goldratt's framework for software domains.
Anderson's influence on the broader Lean-Agile movement was substantial. The Kanban Method became widely adopted in software organizations and influenced the development of Agile frameworks including SAFe. His systematic, policy-driven approach contrasts with Ching's more accessible, narrative-driven style — the two represent complementary modes of transmitting toc-for-software-development to software practitioners.
Position in the transmission chain
The relationship between Anderson and Ching is one of parallel translation rather than direct influence. Both translated Goldratt's manufacturing-context TOC for software audiences; both were active in the Scottish and broader UK Agile communities. The goldratt-to-software-transmission-chain traces both paths alongside gene-kim's DevOps route and steve-tendon's TameFlow approach.