Learn Lean Software Development (PMI-ACP) with Interactive Flashcards

Master key concepts in Lean Software Development through our interactive flashcard system. Click on each card to reveal detailed explanations and enhance your understanding.

Eliminate Waste

In Lean Software Development, waste is anything that doesn’t add value to the customer. Waste can be code, effort, time, or even excessive documentation. The goal of this principle is to simplify the process and get rid of everything that isn’t necessary to creating the end product. By doing this, development time and resources are reduced, leading to a streamlined process that delivers value more efficiently. Examples of waste in software development can include anything from unnecessarily complex code, to unclear requirements that cause delays or require rework. By identifying and eliminating waste, the process becomes more efficient, delivering greater value to the customer.

Build Quality In

Building Quality In refers to the process of ensuring quality from the beginning of the software development process, rather than treating it as an inspection process at the end. This means incorporating various testing strategies, code reviews and best practices from the outset of development. By doing this, problems and bugs can be identified and addressed earlier in the process, making them easier and cheaper to fix. This practice promotes the idea that everyone on the team is responsible for quality, not just testers or quality assurance teams.

Create Knowledge

Creating Knowledge is about ensuring that knowledge is shared across the team and not kept in silos. It's about continual learning and improvement. The idea is that the more knowledge and understanding the team has, the better equipped they are to deal with changes and to make good decisions. This could involve regular team meetings to share lessons learned, or documenting decisions and processes so that they can be referred to in the future. Creating knowledge should be a continual process, where the team learns from each project and then uses that knowledge to improve on the next one.

Defer Commitment

Defer Commitment refers to the practice of waiting for the last responsible moment to make decisions. The idea behind this concept is to keep options open as long as possible, until enough facts are available to make a wise decision. In a software development context, this could relate to making decisions about the implementation of a particular feature or the use of a certain technology. By deferring commitment, you can gather more information and details to ensure you are making the best possible decision at that time.

Respect for People

Respect for People is a fundamental core value of Lean. It suggests that every team member, from senior management to the junior staff, should respect each other's roles and inputs. The success of Lean Software Development heavily relies on the people executing the process, hence giving due respect to their ideas, skills, efforts and areas of expertise fosters a culture of continuous improvement. It means acknowledging everyone’s contribution, treating each other with dignity and creating an environment where everyone feels encouraged to share their ideas and concerns.

Eliminating Waste

In the context of Lean Software Development, eliminating waste is about reducing or getting rid of activities that do not add value to the end product. It includes the elimination of excessive code, delay in the software development process, and unnecessary functions. By focusing on the aspects of the development process that bring value and reducing waste, teams can deliver higher quality products more efficiently.

Amplifying Learning

Amplifying learning in Lean Software Development is focused on the idea of continuous improvement by learning from mistakes and successes. Practices such as iterative development, short feedback loops, and regular reflection on processes and practices encourage a culture of learning. These iterative cycles help in gaining knowledge and making necessary changes for the improvement of the product.

Deciding as Late as Possible

This concept deals with the decision-making process in software development. It is centered around maintaining flexibility by delaying decisions until they can be made based on facts, not assumptions. This means waiting until the last responsible moment to make decisions, in order to reduce the risk of waste due to wrong assumptions and reduce the need for changes in the future.

Delivering as Fast as Possible

This principle insists on rapid delivery of a product for faster customer feedback and minimized risk. It is all about increasing speed and efficiency in the software development process while maintaining quality. It reduces the market costs and ensures a higher level of customer satisfaction due to the quick release of the software.

Empowering the Team

Empowering the Team emphasizes giving autonomy and decision-making power to people who have the best knowledge. It's a process where every team member has the required belief in his capabilities. Team members are encouraged to take decisions and feel responsible for their work. This results in high performance, high morale, innovation, and ownership.

Optimizing the Whole

The principle of 'optimizing the whole' encourages teams to examine entire workflows and systems as opposed to individual performances or components. The goal is to improve the collective performance over any individual part of the process. The negative effects of local optimizations often harm the total productivity. Any action taken should be analyzed on its effect on the total productivity thereby fostering a collaborative work environment and encouraging silos to break down. It emphasizes the value of the complete product and customer satisfaction rather than individual parts of the product or output of a particular stage. Teams utilizing Lean Software Development are encouraged to continually evaluate processes with a holistic outlook.

Amplify Learning

One of the driving principles of Lean Software Development is 'amplifying learning'. This principle encourages the use of iterative development to evolve software solutions. In practice, it means the team should strive to iterate frequently, employ effective feedback loops, and encourage constant learning and improvement. A core characteristic of applying this concept is the preference for short iterations enabling teams to learn from each finished work increment. This allows the team to adjust and make changes incrementally which reduces the risk of wasted work and time by implementing lessons learned more quickly and effectively.

Deliver Fast

The principle of 'deliver fast' pushes teams to aim for shorter delivery cycles. The main objective is to deliver a working product to the customer as swiftly as possible, so defects are found quickly and product value is realized sooner. By breaking complex projects into manageable tasks that can be delivered rapidly, teams can receive feedback quicker, and integrate this feedback into the next iteration. It leads to quick detection of errors and problems which can be rectified immediately. This not only minimizes project risk but also increases customer satisfaction by providing valuable changes faster.

See the Whole

The 'see the whole' principle expands on the concept of examining the whole system not just individual sections when making decisions or changes. This approach encourages a comprehensive understanding of the overall system or workflow, taking into account every operation and process rather than viewing them in isolation. It brings attention to inefficiencies that may arise when processes are optimized separately, creating 'local optimizations' that could potentially harm the overall system. This principle emphasizes the importance of seeing a project from a larger perspective avoiding a concentration on a specific phase, feature or function.

Apply Decisions at the Last Possible Moment

The Lean Software Development principle of 'applying decisions at the last possible moment' does not mean to procrastinate. Instead, it refers to retaining flexibility in choices until a decision is unescapably required. The principle asserts that decisions should not be made prematurely and should only be made when they are informed by facts not assumptions. Holding decision making to the last responsible moment allows for more flexibility and adaptability, which ultimately reduces waste due to rework and enables teams to deliver more efficiently.

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