During the past few years, several methods have appeared in the literature for introducing inelastic isotropic material behavior effects into existing matrix analysis routines. A review is presented of one of these methods. The method is essentially a step-by-step calculation procedure, and corresponds to the flow theory of plasticity. The method has been extended to include the effects of anisotropic material and is formulated as a standard initial strain influence coefficient problem. Several analyses of an aluminum alloy (2024-T4) shear lag structure which has been tested previously for the Air Force are carried out first assuming isotropic material properties and then anisotropic properties. The resulting correlation between test results and that predicted by isotropic theory is reasonably good. An analysis of a 1100 F aluminum shear lag structure, carried out by the incremental method, gave reasonably good agreement. However, the anisotropic creep capability was not checked for want of test data. The approach is a reasonably good phenomenological model of a complex physical problem. The digital computer program submitted is suited for inclusion of other material nonlinearity.