The 7 Software Development Wastes - Lean series Part 5 - Motion

Introduction

Previous posts on software development wastes can be found here: In-Process Inventory/Partially done work , Over Production/Extra Features , Extra Processing and Transportation

I must apologize to you all for the lag in this series. But being August, I was away on vacation. Interestingly, getting back is hard. You have to get back into the swing of things again to get up to maximum productivity. There's quite a bit of re-acquainting and relearning so there's waste for sure. However, I do feel I have more energy now since I am back so perhaps the waste is negated over time.

Motion - Task Switching

Waste #5 in manufacturing is defined as Motion. And motion can be compared to "task switching" in Software Development - as defined by the thought leaders applying Lean thinking to software development.

The 7 Software Development Wastes - Lean series Part 4 - Transportation

Introduction

Previous posts on the first 3 wastes can be found here: In-Process Inventory/Partially done work , Over Production/Extra Features and Extra Processing

#4 Transportation - Hand-offs

Transportation in manufacturing corresponds to hand-offs in software development. Anytime you hand a deliverable off to a different party, there is some loss in the transfer of knowledge.

There are many such examples of hand-offs in software development:

1. Developer hands off to another developer. In this scenario if the first developer never documented the code properly it's going to take significant addition effort to figure things out. Worse, the second developer may make assumptions and, as a result, introduce bugs in the system.

The 7 Software Development Wastes - Lean series Part 3 - Extra Processing

Introduction

Waste is a killer in any organization. But if you don't know what to look for then you're probably not going to be able to find waste and minimize it or eradicate it. This series primarily deals with explicitly defining the 7 wastes in software development so that you can start thinking about how this may affect your ability to remain as productive as you can be. This can make a significant difference to your company's bottom line.

As reference, the first two wastes can be found in my previous blog posts here: In-Process Inventory/Partially done work and Over Production/Extra Features.

#3 - Extra processing

Extra processing in Manufacturing is the 3rd waste and this can be equated to Relearning or Rework in Software development. The time we spend relearning things we once knew or having to rework the same feature due to poor code quality can be significant in many organizations, ergo, it's important to be mindful of this. It's probably useful to list examples that would cause extra processing in software development