Lean Software Development

Lean Mindset for Breakthrough Innovation

Lean approach offers a solid conceptual framework, values and principles, as well as best practices derived from experience, that support agile organizations with business transformation and technology adoption. The core idea of Lean engineering process is to maximize customer value while minimizing the delivery effort.

Lean thinking has a long history of generating dramatic improvements in fields as diverse as manufacturing, healthcare and construction. The following Lean principles have been tried and proven by managers in many disciplines, and have made a significant positive impact on IT project delivery:

• Eliminate Waste — minimize whatever gets in the way of rapidly satisfying the customer.
• Amplify Learning — produce several variations on a theme as part of the learning process.
• Defer Decisions — keep design options open until enough facts are gathered for a decision.
• Accelerate Delivery — shorten the design, implement, feedback and improve product lifecycle.
• Empower the Team — challenge and involve developers in the details of technical decisions.
• Build Quality In — demand quality of the end-product to help maintain its usefulness over time.
• Optimize the Whole — emphasize synergy between system parts over their individual performance.

These guiding principles are broadly applicable across functional domains, as long as they are translated into appropriate good practices for each of them. Organizations that have understood and adopted the essence of Lean thinking have realized significant, sustainable performance improvements.