To succeed in today’s intensely competitive global marketplace, organizations must deliver value to its customers as well as employees. They must adapt the best practice to move faster and keep customers happy by delivering high-quality products and services to them while creating a stable structure and promoting a healthy culture within the organization. The goal is lofty, and it is impossible to achieve the feat through traditional corporate structures that are slow-moving. Adapting smarter and more efficient methods are the only ways for organizations to survive and become high-growth companies.
Salesforce DevOps helps to speed up the process for delivering applications that lead to better customer satisfaction, which is key to business improvement. Software development methodologies have relied on the Lean and Agile development principles, and these form the nucleus of DevOps too. Both methodologies highlight the need for effective collaboration and communication with users and other stakeholders of the software development process, as realized by organizations that use DevOps who are compelled to change their work culture to reap the benefits.
What are the Lean principles of software development and how it can transform organizations will become clear on going through this article.
Applying the Lean principles in software development
The Lean principles were first implemented in the manufacturing sector to minimize waste and maximize value to customers. Today, the same principles are useful for software development projects that have similar goals because of the similarity of the manufacturing processes. Like manufacturing, software development processes are repeatable, need to maintain a defined standard of quality, and rely on a team of specialized workmen to get the job done. The similarity ends here because the end products are entirely different. Manufacturing produces physical goods that convey value to customers, but for software development, the value creation happens in the mind of the developer. Applying Lean principles to knowledge work would entail a shift in the mindset with respect to defining value, waste, and other concepts.
The Lean principles
The Lean principles provide clear direction about eliminating the factors that stretch processes and lead to delays in achieving faster delivery of the end-product by respecting the needs of users. The summarized principles and how to use them for software development are enumerated below.
Waste elimination
The first Lean principle states that you must eliminate anything from the process that does not provide value to the customer. The Toyota School of Lean Manufacturing identifies 7 mudas or wastes which, when adapted for the software development process, would mean the use of unnecessary code or functionality, starting with or taking up more than what is possible to complete and delays in the software development process.
Besides, constantly changing or unclear requirements, slow or ineffective communication, and bureaucracy can slow down the process. Partial work does not add value to the customer, and issues with quality or defective work is a massive waste as it may require rework or lead to scarp generation.
Switching tasks is also unproductive as it leads to poor quality of work, communication breakdowns, delays, and affect team morale.
In-built quality
Building quality into the work might seem an evident goal of every team as it helps to enhance self-pride, but it is easier said than done unless formalized through some disciplined practice. Unregulated efforts in creating quality generate more waste from excessive testing or excessive logging of defects. To take a disciplined approach for infusing quality within the work processes, teams are using techniques of pair programming, test-driven development, incremental development, reducing the knowledge gap, and lack of focus and automation to avoid the pitfalls of processes prone to human error.
Create knowledge
This principle of Lean development requires focus and discipline for implementation. The principle helps to create the necessary infrastructure to properly documenting and retaining valuable learning. To achieve it, teams can use one or several of the tools like pair programming, documentation, code reviews, allow the gradual build-up of the knowledge base, knowledge sharing sessions, and thoroughly commented code, tools to manage user stories or requirements, and training.
Defer commitment
There is often some confusion in interpreting this principle, and even chances of misuse as people tend to stick to the literary meaning of the principle without referring to the context. No one should think that the principle allows the team to take an irresponsible decision or become prone to changing their stand frequently. Instead, the principle encourages to demonstrate responsibility by continuously collecting information and keeping options open instead of making decisions without the backing of valid data. Defer commitment means avoiding planning and committing without a full understanding of the business needs.
Fast delivery
Every team is keen to deliver fast so that value can pass on to customers quickly. But concerns arise about factors that can hinder the progress of the project. Some of the pitfalls to avoid are overthinking in advance about future requirements, inability to urgently respond for removing blockers and over-engineering, and lofty business requirements. This does not mean working long hours and working recklessly to attain speed. Instead, it is about building a simple solution, presenting it to customers, and improving gradually based on customer feedback. Since speed to market gives a cutting edge in competition, this principle is especially important for software development teams.
Respect people
From customers to team members and other stakeholders, everyone deserves respect, and it is the responsibility of every team member to ensure that they practice it. The respect that the team members show to the people they have to interact within the course of implementing the project must reflect in their actions.
Optimize the whole
The speed must be maintained throughout the various stages of software development and reflect in the actions of every team member by ensuring that the momentum is not only maintained but increases as the development progresses. It does not help if some stages are too much speedy but fails to generate the momentum for its sustenance in the subsequent stages.
Overall speed is essential, and It means optimization of the whole instead of doing it in bits and pieces.
Be the first to comment