Seven Wastes of Software Development

A large percentage of software projects suffer problems due to what Tom & Mary Poppindieck call the seven wastes of software development. Born out of the lean movement, and started in the 70s with organisation such as 3M and Toyota who looked at their failure productions lines and tried to cut waste at every step of their cycle it is what become known today as “just in time” manufacturing.

The seven wastes when applied to software development became know as

• 1. Extra/Unused features. Also know as over production or inventory; how many software products have been released in production wiht features the customer never asked for, never new he was getting or never wanted in the first place. How many "cool" features make it into software ?
• 2. Intermediate/unused artifacts. Writing a document because your process says you must adds little if no value to the overall delivery. Instead Agile says produce the right information in the right format for the right people at the right time
• 3. Extra Processing.Unused featurs and artifacts need to be read, signed off or tested. This is adds unnecassary overhead to the project
• 4. Seeking Information. With all the additional information, the time it takes to read, sign off, test increases, documents have to be circulated, people given time to print and review them. Its all waste
• 5. Escaped defects not caught by tests/reviews. If unwanted features are added, how can they be tested, ultimately code is released that people do not know about, and has not be passed by QA. Later one when that area of code needs to be modified its undocumented, untested, unknown making time to change significantly higher.
• 6. Waiting (including Customer Waiting). With all the extra artefacts and features, the more information that has to flow around the project team and its spectators. The more flow the longer it takes to get anything completed.
• 7. Handoffs Also known as Transportation, the longer the information chain, the more jumps something needs to make and therefore the longer it takes to get anything circulated and signed off, once again adding waste to a project.