Lean product development has often been applied to manufacturing, however little has been written about how to apply the concepts to software development. In Implementing Lean Software Development, Mary and Tom Poppendieck translate lean manufacturing to lean software.
Among many concepts, they explain how queuing theory allows you to reduce cycle time:
- Even out the arrival of work
- Minimize the number of things in process
- Minimize size of things
- Establish a regular cadence
- Limit work to capacity
- Use pull scheduling
Steve,
I believe that the SCRUM methodology tries to embody lean precepts you listed.
Mike
Posted by: Mike | January 02, 2007 at 02:21 PM
Mike,
You are right. In the forward to the book SCRUM is mentioned a couple times. I've read just a little about SCRUM, so perhaps this book is also a good introduction to concepts related to SCRUM.
Posted by: Steve Neiderhauser | January 02, 2007 at 07:10 PM