Overview of Lean Software Development?

If you have seen our previous blogs about agile, we have clearly mentioned different types of agile methodologies, in which lean Software Development is also one of them.

LSD is a way of functioning the company during the development of any project. Meaning when a company undertakes any project, then the company undertakes a set of rules, protocols, or methodologies to finish that project.

And these set of rules, protocols, or methodologies are already pre-defined, all the company has to do is, just implement one of these methodologies.

Methodologies include.

1. Scrum Methodology
2. Lean Software Development Methodology
3. Crystal Methodology
4. Dynamic Software Development Method (DSDM)
5. Extreme Programming
6. Feature Driven Development (FDD)

In this article, we will discuss Lean Software Development.

What is Lean Software Development?

Lean Software Development is an agile methodology framework used by software developing companies. It mainly focuses on developing a minimum viable product by optimizing the time and resources and also by eliminating waste.

It also focuses on releasing or launching the product first in the market and then taking the feedbacks of customers and deciding what changes or modification needs to be done.

How Lean Software Development Works?

Once you undertake any project from the client you need a set of rules and regulations to achieve the target, now this set of rules and regulations as we talked about earlier is nothing but an agile methodology.

Suppose you choose the Lean Software Development method for your team. Therefore you need to educate or give an overview of LSD and how it works. So let’s begin.

LSD is based on these principles.

1. Eliminating Waste
2. Empower the Team
3. Deliver Fast
4. Optimize the Whole
5. Build Quality
6. Defer Decisions
7. Amplify Learning

Let’s see all these concepts one by one.

1. Eliminating Waste

In this category, all type of waste comes in which are generated during or post-project completion. Meaning you might be under the process of building the project and you could be generating waste knowingly or unknowingly, or the project has been finished and you have delivered the product but the final product itself may be generating waste. Sources of waste may comprise of

• Partial work is done: – Meaning the final deadline is near and work is not completed.
• Extra process: – Meaning doing something which does not add value to the product.
• Extra Feature: – Meaning adding some features which aren’t going to help the product.
• Defects: – Defects in the product itself or irrelevant documentation.

2. Empower the Team

Micromanagement is a word that means managing the distributed team even at the lowest level. Meaning if you have an organization of 100 employees and you have divided it into two categories front-end developer consists of 50 employees back end developer consists of 50 employees.

Now as CEO of organizations you control both frontend and backend, but further in the front end, there is a division of 10 employees on each team and so is in the backend. Now what you do is you assign a team leader even for this set of employees, which consists of 10 employees per team. This concept is called Micromanagement.

Now micromanagement gives the impression to employees that everything is been controlled and kills the feeling of freedom within an organization. Therefore it is highly recommended to give employees a sense of power by making them take their own decisions at the micro-level.

3. Deliver Fast

LSD itself is an agile methodology, therefore it focuses on incremental releases.

Meaning instead of a big release at once after a long time LSD suggests that you should release a minimum viable product at first and then come up with time-based releases in incremental ways.

This helps stakeholders to be connected with outputs the team is generating and gives them a sense of motivation.

4. Optimize the Whole

This means that the project should not be seen from only a completion point of view, the project team should keep an eye on all the other requirements of the project and seeking the client’s permission for some additional features if needed to be added.

This also aims to work across platforms in cooperation with other teams which may be a direct or indirect part of the project.

For example, if you are working on an e-commerce website and you came to know that a local license will be required to sell anything on e-commerce, then you update the client’s to pursue a local vendor license and you go ahead on adding the license feature in your project by your own.

5. Build Quality

Right from the beginning of the project, the team should keep in mind the value for the customer that is all the things are done to ease or solve the problem of the customer.

Therefore at every step be it planning, building, deploying, feedback, or support quality should be the highest priority. 

6. Defer Decisions

If there encounters a situation that the team and the client’s opinion is getting contradicted and time permits to delay this deferred decision situation, then LSD suggests taking this opportunity and delay the decision as it may be resolved on its own.

7. Amplify Learning

This mainly focuses on taking feedback from the customer as well as from the client about the project, its time expiations we met or not, any problems, etc. in this part the organizations showcase their achievements take notes for further projects, and many more. This is the last core concept of LSD (Lean Software Development).