Category: cycle time

"Stop Starting and Start Finishing" - A successful Lean philosophy

May 15, 2009 by Jack Milunsky

Introduction
One of the killers on software development projects is Work-In-Progress. We have learned from the Lean experts and from the teachings on the Toyota Production System that too much work-in-progress is a liability. Just yesterday I was asked to spot the problem with a sister company's task board. Sure enough one developer had 5 or 6 "in-progress" tasks on the task board. It took me a split second to notice.

Productivity
The problem with this situation is that as a developer if you're working on more than two tasks, simultaneously your productivity takes a dive. Additionally you're going to end up with many unfinished tasks that never get completed. This is a classic problem in Waterfall where tasks have half-lives are in the order of man months. The more tasks in play at any given time, the more tasks that never get finished.