The end goal is to release an optimized product tailored to the needs of the customer. Inculcate pair programming to help developers learn from each other and encourage team bonding. Documentation must be done for designs, product requirements, analytics, features developed, versions released, etc. In this guide, we’ll introduce you to the lean methodology, look at a famous example, and explore ways to promote lean thinking in your organization. The decision to adopt lean comes with a lot of bureaucratic and cultural barriers. Overall, most organizations that fail at adopting an efficient and successful lean model tend to face the same problems.

The prime objective of Lean development is to reduce the time and resources needed to build and deploy software. There are a number of benefits to using lean development, including faster software delivery, improved quality, and reduced costs. In software development – and project management for software development – you can use several approaches to create successful products. Lean development is one approach that has gained popularity in recent years. Lean development is based on the principle of continuous improvement, or Kaizen.

Guiding Principles of Lean Development

Customers are the ultimate deciders of value, so their close collaboration is essential in pursuing business agility. Contracts are often necessary to convey each party’s rights, responsibilities, and economic concerns—but recognize that contracts can over-regulate what to do and how to do it. They don’t replace regular communication, collaboration, and trust, no matter how well they’re written. Win-lose contracts usually result in poor economic outcomes and distrust, creating contentious short-term relationships instead of long-term business partnerships. Deming notes, “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, then you don’t know what you are doing.” [12] So, Agile processes in frameworks like Scrum, Kanban, and SAFe matter. When we’re captive to a process that isn’t working, it creates waste and delays.

That’s why it’s more important than ever for product teams to not only be resourceful but quick and nimble. One Gartner survey found that 32% of respondents said their need to deliver more quickly was the main reason for adopting a product-centric approach, lean product development software citing “speed to market” as their core metric. Lean software development works by first identifying value streams and then visualizing them. Unlike manufacturing, software engineering produces intangible goods which can’t be physically touched.

Deliver things quickly

This principle of Lean development emphasizes the importance of allowing people to safely share their ideas and feelings. The goal is to recognize that people are the most valuable assets in the company. Therefore, leaders need to practice empathy, encourage people to express their point of view on work processes or problems, and ask for their opinion when making decisions.

• Lean software development teams continuously gather knowledge about the work process and product/service they are building.
• Too much capacity compared to market pull results in waste, which is antithetical to Lean thinking.
• This also allows later adaptation to changes and the prevention of costly earlier technology-bounded decisions.
• The needed information is received in small batch pieces – not in one vast chunk – preferably by face-to-face communication and not any written documentation.
• Lean is the process of applying a scientific experimentation approach to find optimal solutions to user problems.
• However, it is now considered an integral part of the Agile software development methodology.
• To do this, you need to set the blueprint for the rest of the team to follow.

This is an approach coined by Eric Ries in his book The Lean Startup, published in 2011. It’s mostly for new product development teams and startups who haven’t yet formulated a finished product. The idea is to validate the initial assumptions made by startups at this early stage of the lifecycle in order to make sure that what they’re building is solving real user problems.

Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation

It’s about putting a process in place that ensures value isn’t lost or team morale is maintained as products move through the delivery cycle. Pair programming, sometimes known as “two heads better than one,” is a concept in software engineering. It’s based on the idea that every business represents a value stream – the sequence of activities required to design, produce, and deliver a product or service to customers. If our goal is to deliver as much value to our customers as quickly as possible, then we have to optimize our value streams to be able to do just that. To understand how to optimize our value streams, first we have to properly identify them.

So, favor individuals and interactions, then modify processes accordingly. Tools are valuable but should supplement, rather than replace, face-to-face communication. Set standards and best practices for core product management activities so everyone follows the same repeatable approach. Use the prioritization view to assess the product value each one will deliver and align on what to build next.

Eliminate Waste

Proven effective in companies large and small across diverse industries, it is more than merely a strategy for product development. It enables you to leverage your entire enterprise to build a sustainable system for consistently creating profitable value streams that, from the start, eliminate upstream issues. Another central purpose of Lean software development is to empower software engineering companies to gain a competitive advantage in the market. This happens by quickly releasing Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) instead of fully complete solutions. In addition, the build-in quality principle also contributes to that purpose as Lean software development companies focus on 100% inspection before a solution is released. As a result, everything that reaches customers’ hands is more likely to satisfy their needs.

Once you thoroughly grasp the basics, you can begin implementing some of the key practices into your workflow. This means constantly assessing your work process and looking for ways to improve it. One downside is that Lean development can lead to a “ship it now, fix it later” mentality, which can result in lower quality products. Additionally, because Lean development relies heavily on customer feedback, it can be difficult to please everyone and meet all expectations. With 13 years of experience in the IT industry and in-depth technical training, Peter could not be anything but our CTO. He had contact with every possible architecture and helped create many solutions for large and small companies.

Designing the Future Remotely: An Introduction to Lean Product and Process Development

Mary and Tom Poppendieck used the term Lean software development in the book they published by the same name in 2003. It applied the seven Lean principles to software engineering and the development process. Toyota started its journey with lean product development[1] at Toyota Loom Works (see History of Toyota). Their early approach is notably different from Lean manufacturing that became famous through the book “The Machine that changed the world”. To get started with Lean product development, start with a significant amount of planning and research.

In lean development, work units are given general plans and reasonable goals and trusted to self-organize. That’s because customer-facing employees often have a more complete understanding of customer needs than central managers, and are often are more effective at staffing and resourcing their own projects. For instance, a financial services software team could include designers, engineers, and product marketers so the team can operate as an independent unit.

Lean software practices

This requires buy-in from all stakeholders on the team—people need time and energy before they are willing to change their habits. Waste reduction, the first tenet in Lean engineering, has its primary objective. If you don’t know what a prototype is, check our article “What is prototype? ” from which you will learn exactly what a prototype is, why it is worth creating and how to make it right. Change is a reality in the digital age and essential to achieving agility. As the system evolves, so does the understanding of the problem and the solution domain.