Waste by definition, is garbage or rubbish and elimination of it quite literally means removing the bad, rotten, stinking practices from our software development process and code smells (a side effect of not eliminating the rubbish) from our implementation.
When we talk about lean manufacturing or more precisely eliminating the waste, then essentially what we are talking about is
- Delivering what makes sense to the customer and nothing more, as anything more is a waste. Try and help the customer distinguish between what he really needs against what he might need.
- Keep paying off the technical debt as soon and as much as possible. I consider paying off technical debts as synonymous to eliminating waste.
- Keeping a constant flow of work and working at a sustainable pace, eliminating the chance of dip in productivity, quality and motivation.
- More lines of code when less can do, is a waste. How often we have looked at a big massive codebase and thought to ourselves. What a waste? Get rid of it and every time I have a done it I have felt very good about it. Just think of it as if removing even few grams of weight from your backpack while travelling on an adventurous trip. Code light and it will definitely pay off
- Eliminate the artifacts which states what we are going to do, by really doing it. Non working, out dated artifacts is something we should always avoid
- Eliminate specialist roles as that would promote collective ownership and passion to collectively work for the success of the project.
