Category: overproduction

The 7 Sofware Development Wastes - Part 2

July 6, 2009 by Jack Milunsky

Introduction

I have been writing for AgileSoftwareDevelopment.com for nearly 6 months now and was quite shocked to see how many folks read last week's blog post. I can only assume from the response that there is a lot of interest in Lean. Which in my opinion is a really good thing as we can learn tremendous lessons from this philosophy. I wish I knew about Lean earlier in my career - I think it could have made the world of difference. Lean offers such practical advice on what to look for in order to make the process better. I think just knowing about these aspects of lean will help you day to day, help you make better decisions, make you a more effective player on a software development team.

Last week I covered the first manufacturing waste In- Process Inventory corresponding to partially done work in software development.

This week I will discuss the 2nd Waste:

Over - Production

Over production in manufacturing amounts to production of goods that are not required or consumed immediately by a customer. This is very costly in a manufacturing plant. Inventory can become stale, superceded, damaged etc.

In the software world, over-production is the same as excess features, features not really needed by customers. My understanding is that there is evidence to backup the fact that over 60% of features in software are ever used.