As the sofware market continuously evolves, there are a few principles and practices that dominate the software development domain. As it was adapted from the Toyota production, Lean software development is emerging from the Agile comunity and it offers a conceptual framework, as well as good practices, derived from experience.
The term itself originates in a book by the same name, written by Mary and Tom Poppendieck, a book that not only restates traditional Lean principles, as well as a set of 22 tools, but also comparing the tools and the practical aspects.
The principles that rule the Lean model are :
– elimination of waste in any form
– the amplification of learning
– deciding as late as possible upon a solution
– fast delivery
– empowering the team
– building the integrity that the team needs
– optimizing the process as a whole.
Coaching in this domain is one of the main rules and principles and it means identifying exactly what can and must be optimized : elimination of waste must include and will include, in a perfect situation, multiple factors. Waste can mean partially finished work that may come in between us and the final result, extra features added, but not needed, relearning basic tasks, switching from task to task without being qualified to do so, waiting for approval from superiors, defects found within the process, but also management activities that can be delegated and handoffs.
None of the above can be prevented if we do not learn to recognize waste and the way it affects our work as a whole : we need to understand when we are building the wrong feature or product, when complex solutions are unnecessarily included in our daily activities, when psychological stress is involved and when the knowledge that our team has is being used wrong. Coaching in this domain is therefore a very complex issue, that must be not only understood, but approached as a whole and solved in the same manner. What we can help you with is exactly that : getting to know the weak points of your team, building trust and becoming a more effective company, with a much more understanding team and better results.