Much of the adoption of Lean principles to software development over the past decade has drawn from the manufacturing domain, and from the Toyota Production System in particular. One aspect of TPS from this perspective is a desire to eliminate or manage variability. In the networking and telecommunications domain, variability is something to be designed for, rather than eliminated. In product development more generally, variability is expected. Variability is interesting. The Telecommunications domain has developed robust methods of managing flow, while still dealing with variability. In this talk Ken Power will discuss the links between principles of telecommunications design and how Cisco Systems build products, looking at examples of how organization structures are designed to support our teams, and how teams execute on projects.