Re:Where did all the developers go?
by dragonwriter on Tuesday May 13, 2014 @01:13PM
(#7739293)
> Lean, applied to software, would mean that the software team can see opportunities to improve their process and/or tools, and would have the power to do so.
Yes, that's exactly what Lean in software means (and you'll note that it has a very close relation to Agile principles -- Lean is pretty much Agile with more focus on measurable output and several decades more of development behind it -- both for the good and the bad [there's a lot of depth in the literature of practices and how and when they work to draw from for your circumstances, but there's also breadth and depth in the buzzword snake-oil].)
I've actually been on a team that did this. "For the next two-week iteration, we're going to change the process in this way, and we'll see how that works."
Process doesn't have to be a static thing handed down from on high. Hack it. Make it work for you. (One of the agile approaches to software is "pay attention to pain". That is, when it's hard to change the software in some way, that's telling you that it should be refactored so that it quits being hard to change it in that way. Well, the same thing works for process. If the process is painful, pay attention. It's telling you that you need to change the process.)