The Lean Success Story
It’s only the last turn of a bolt that tightens it—the rest is just movement.
It is only recently that the Lean principles have been applied to software development. In the beginning it all started with Lean manufacturing (some 40 to 60 years ago, depending on when you start the clock). Of course, it wasn’t called Lean back then. It was the Toyota Production System, or Just-In-Time manufacturing. James Womack, Daniel Jones, and Daniel Roos coined the term “Lean” in their 1990 book, The Machine That Changed the World (Harper Perennial).
Lean is a mindset, a way of thinking about how to deliver value to the customer more quickly by finding and eliminating waste (the impediments to quality and productivity). This philosophy is expressed in a set of principles that have proven remarkably applicable to a wide range of business activities. The Lean principles have been used successfully in areas as diverse as the supply chain, the office, engineering, and (of course) software development.
First, we’ll take a look at the roots of Lean thinking with a short history of how Lean developed in manufacturing. In Chapter 2, we’ll show you how you can apply Lean thinking to software development and how it differs from Agile.
A Whirlwind History of Lean
To really appreciate the emergence of Lean production and its derivatives, you have to understand what it was replacing (or competing with): mass production.
Henry Ford popularized mass production (which had itself ...