What is lean in software industry

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Lean manufacturing looks specifically at areas of waste and seeks to reduce or eliminate waste and improve business processes and workflows. When you think about waste, your mind may immediately go to excess inventories. While this can include products, it also includes non-essential processes, activities, and services. These require time and money but often fail to create actual value for customers.

For example, when you identify and correct areas of waste, you often uncover hidden or underutilized competencies that can:. Conversations about lean manufacturing tools and techniques often include references to Six Sigma. This is a process improvement method that employs a team-based approach to removing waste and minimizing process variation.

In theory, both Six Sigma and lean manufacturing center on the same ideals. Both seek to identify and reduce process defects and eliminate waste. The difference lies in how they define waste. With lean manufacturing, waste is considered a byproduct of business process inefficiencies. This may include:. On the other hand, Six Sigma views waste as a direct result of process variation. In this approach, variation is considered any result that deviates from customer expectations. The idea is that if you can identify when, where, and why variations occur, you can create more purposeful and valuable products and services.

As you eliminate variations, you streamline operations to create a more consistent delivery method. This improves customer satisfaction and boosts brand loyalty.

Though the two schools of thought can be applied separately, manufacturers often combine the ideals of lean manufacturing with those of Six Sigma to create a hybrid approach called Lean Six Sigma. As you embrace Lean Six Sigma principles to improve and reengineer your business processes, there are several common tools you can employ. Keep in mind that not all of these must be used simultaneously. Some companies only use a few, while others use them all. As you use these tools, you can discover ways to fine-tune your existing processes, in turn, making your business nimbler and more responsive.

A control chart graphically tracks a specific process input or output over time. It gives you the opportunity to evaluate how stable a given process or operation is over a set period. The center line on a control chart indicates process results during the timeframe. There are also upper and lower control limits that depict whether the degree of process variation is within an acceptable range.

A value stream is the end-to-end processes that occur from the time a customer initiates a request until a company delivers that expected value.

A value stream map illustrates these processes. Seeing all the individual steams in a visual format can help you understand where critical hand-offs occur. Then, you can identify where inconsistencies and waste may originate. This means continuously seeking out new ways to innovate and remain competitive. Some companies choose to make continuous improvement a formal practice, while others simply establish general guidelines for employees to follow.

In either case, everyone in your company should support and actively participate in the initiative. Cumulative flow is also fundamental to another lean manufacturing tool called Kanban. This is a visualization technique that demonstrates how tasks and processes are distributed over time.

It takes time to implement these new processes and glean value from them. Every time a person shuffles between tasks, there is a significant time that is required to gather the information, thoughts, and get into the new task. According to research, it takes a minimum of 15 minutes of concentration to enter flow, and during this time, you are not productive. Imagine - if a developer is interrupted two times a day, over half an hour of work is lost.

There are some activities for which we need approvals, or there is some action required by some other team. Defect resolution takes a lot of time, first wait till it is recognized and then wait for the resolution. The expenses which are incurred on fixing a defect at an early stage are significantly lower than those identified after the product has been delivered.

If we want to implement Lean in any firm, then it becomes essential to consider the people as the main asset of the company. Primary roles in Lean development process are as follows-. Lean Masters will help the client by-. Lean project Leader works as a communication channel between Lean Master and the team but also works as a motivator. His main responsibilities include-. In a small size project, the Lean team will be a team of members. Their roles and responsibilities are as follows-.

Time, Distance, Team Size, Workforce , despite all these limitations in the real world the main focus of Lean remains the same — remove the waste and hence make your process more effective and always aim to get your work done through the process with as little roadblocks as possible.

Now as the owner of the restaurant, what will you do to feed them efficiently? In the software development industry, Unnecessary Codes, Transportation, Partially Done Work, Defects, Task Switching, and Over Processing , these are some of the examples of above mentioned seven wastes. These wastes are to be identified and removed at every stage to deliver fast and better functioning features to the customer, and Lean Team members ensure they do it correctly.

They find out the source of the waste and then work on the root. The above picture shows the general functions, features, and documents usage data of a software development company. In any software company, there is usually a large portion of functions and features which are developed but never used or rarely used. The same goes for documents that are unused. In short, to serve efficiently, you need to make sure there is no waste of time, cost, or manpower in the process.

In short, we should prefer the team over the process to be productive and successful. In the software industry, you can empower them by-.

For our restaurant example - You will provide your staff, all that is required, i. You will also keep them motivated by giving away small tokens of appreciation. Also, they need to trust their experience and work skills. In Lean, we identify steps which are slowing us down, eliminate them as it will help us in fast delivery of software solution to the client.

In Lean, we develop and deliver software solutions, incrementally to the client. Lean Project Leader keeps a track and ensures timely delivery. For our restaurant example - we have taken a case where we have made two different processes:. Therefore, the restaurant got rid of Process 1 as it is slowing them down and follows Process 2 for faster delivery. In software development organizations, developers may feel pressurized to meet stringent timelines and end up writing sloppy code, which may result in more defects.