Mary Poppendieck "What is the Biggest Waste in Software Development?"

According to Lean Software Development thought-leaders and acclaimed authors Mary and Tom Poppendieck the biggest waste in software development is "building the wrong thing". With 64% of software features never or rarely used, Mary and Tom show that building the wrong things and dealing with the additional complexity of managing the features never used, for the life of the product, is a huge waste on IT projects.


Mary and Tom were in Wellington last week working with Equinox IT and delivering two Lean Leader's Workshops to Equinox IT clients. In addition, Mary also presented a small number of executive and group presentations. The principles that Mary and Tom present are taken from lean manufacturing and applied to software development provide a fresh perspective that focuses on waste, simplicity, quality, and flow.

On the two-day Lean Leader's Workshops, Mary and Tom also covered other topics including:

• Build the right thing - building the wrong thing is the biggest waste in software development.
• Build the thing right - reducing waste from unused features, from handovers, from task switching, from too much work in progress, and from defects. The course explored value stream maps, queuing theory, increasing pace, pull scheduling, building quality in, and continuous delivery as ways to build the thing right.
• Build the right organisation - build complete teams, organised for speed, representing all of the functions necessary to deliver a product.
• Deliver / learn fast - using iterative and kanban workflows to reduce release cycle times and speed up learning and delivery.
• Keep getting better - techniques for delivering highly reliable and high velocity outcomes.