7 principles of lean software development

Lean software development is guided by seven core principles, which are derived from lean manufacturing concepts. Here are the seven principles of lean software development:

1. Eliminate Waste: This principle emphasizes the identification and elimination of any activities or processes in the software development cycle that do not add value to the final product. Waste can take many different forms, including unnecessary and redundant code, over documentation, defects, and features not used.
2. Amplify Learning: Lean software development encourages learning, knowledge sharing and continuous improvement. This principle emphasizes the teams should actively seek feedback from users, stakeholders, and the development process itself and utilize the feedback to help the themselves to train and adapt to changing requirements and improve the software iteratively.
3. Decide as Late as Possible: Avoid making irreversible decisions and committing to specific solutions too early in the development process. This principle emphasizes that the teams should gather as much information as possible before making any decision. This approach allows teams to gather more information and provides flexibility and the incorporation of new insights before making any irreversible decision.
4. Deliver as Fast as Possible: Lean promotes delivering small, incremental changes to the software quickly. By doing so, teams can provide value to customers sooner, gather feedback, and respond to changing requirements more effectively thereby helping reduce the cost of rework in case a fully featured product is released in a single release that is not meeting the current perceived market demands.
5. Empower the Team: This principle talks about respect, a healthy and collaborative environment. This empowerment fosters a culture of responsibility and ownership, leading to better problem-solving and increased motivation.
6. Build Integrity In: Also referred to as "Build quality in" because this principle gives emphasis to the quality of code. Teams must ensure that the software components and subsystems work cohesively to deliver the expected value to the user. Another aspect of this principle involves building quality by implementing practices like continuous integration, test driven development and address issues early, preventing the accumulation of defects.
7. Optimize the Whole: Rather than focusing on optimizing individual parts of the software development process, lean encourages optimizing the entire value stream. This does not just include optimizing the code but also includes looking at the end-to-end process, identifying bottlenecks, and making improvements to enhance overall efficiency and effectiveness.

These seven principles of lean software development provide a foundation for teams to streamline their processes, reduce waste, improve quality, and deliver value to customers more efficiently in a work environment that promotes respecting people with differing opinions.

Lean principles are often applied in conjunction with agile methodologies, such as Scrum and Kanban, to create a more adaptive and customer-centric software development approach.