Lean software development really isn’t lean

April 28th, 2009 by Hang

For anyone manufacturing physical products on a large scale, Lean Manufacturing has been the hot new thing for quite some time. The Lean Software Development movement packages up a set of generally useful guidelines but it’s connection to lean manufacturing is tenuous at best and fundamentally misunderstands the software process.

It’s been a persistant mistake of management to treat the production of software as a manufacturing task and apply the same manufacturing methodologies that work well for physical products. But as Jack Reeves points out in his classic essay “What is Software Design”:

There is one consequence of considering code as software design that completely overwhelms all others. It is so important and so obvious that it is a total blind spot for most software organizations. This is the fact that software is cheap to build. It does not qualify as inexpensive; it is so cheap it is almost free. If source code is a software design, then actually building software is done by compilers and linkers.

The actual manufacture of software is done purely by the compiler and, as such, software development can be considered the first discipline to have completely solved the manufacturing problem. Lean manufacturing says that we should aspire to six sigma of defect quality, well, software developers can do better than that. Every time we hit the compile button, we are confident that not a bit will be out of place.

Software development is closer to the research & development phase of manufacturing and the few attempts to bring a lean process into those domains have ended in abject failure.

It’s not that lean software development is a bad methodology, it’s not. For the most part, it sounds like a sensible set of guidelines. But to pretend that it has much of anything to do with lean manufacturing is a mistake.

| Comments (6)

  • http://elseinc.com/ Cristal Mcmeans

    Six sigma is more fitting on software development, since you’re after quality, and not waste-reduction. After all, why would you eliminate waste on a waste-less process? Lean manufacturing should be involved on manufacturing and development of goods that takes a lot of time to make.

  • Anonymous

    The first discipline to have completely solved the manufacturing problem. 

    ISO Consultants

  • BuyGiftsItems

    Generating a sales lead to the end of project thus offering several advantages including:
    a deal a day

  • Anonymous

    John Krafcik in a Fall 1988 article, “Triumph of the Lean Production System,” published in the Sloan Management Review and based on his master’s thesis at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
    Auto Salvage

  • Anonymous

    The reason was tragically simple: she was a girl, and her three siblings were boys.

    Mirriored Furniture

  • http://www.adodis.com/Website-Design-Riyadh.php Website Designer Riyadh

    Of course software development is very import for the research and development field.. great sharing..
    Web Designer Riyadh | Riyadh website design company