Maximize the work not done!

There was an old classic goon show back in the long, long ago, called "Fear of Wages" in which the character enters the work exchange and utters the classic line "Any fear of work today?" I believe it might have been Peter Sellers who uttered this. At the time this made me laugh a lot and was a nice piece of satire relating to the culture of work avoidance in Britain. Satire and comedy aside, however, it should provoke a serious thought process for any CEO or CPO of a business and why the application of Software Craftsmanship as a set of guiding principles coupled with lean should make you fear work being done in your business that is a waste. This article is about what this is (if you've never heard of this before) and why you should avoid it.

So lets start with a definition of Muda. (taken from the Lean Way website)

"Muda means wastefulness, uselessness and futility, which is contradicting value-addition. Value-added work is a process that adds value to the product or service that the customer is willing to pay for. There are two types of Muda, Type 1 and Type 2. Muda Type 1 includes non-value-added activities in the processes that are necessary for the end customer. For example, inspection and safety testing does not directly add value to the final product; however, they are necessary activities to ensure a safe product for customers. Muda Type 2 includes non-value added activities in the processes, but these activities are unnecessary for the customer. As a result, Muda Type 2 should be eliminated. There are seven categories of waste under Muda Type 2 that follow the abbreviation TIMWOOD. The seven wastes are (1) Transport i.e. excess movement of product, (2) Inventory i.e. stocks of goods and raw materials, (3) Motion i.e. excess movement of machine or people, (4) Waiting, (5) Overproduction, (6) Over-processing, and (7) Defects."

I have wanted to add something to this as an item of Muda Type 2 which I have observed in several startups, doesn't directly fit in those 7 categories and I have encountered over the years and that is the fat, detailed and bloated product road map that has hundreds of features and stories in it. Often caused by a CEO who wants to do everything, everywhere all at once coupled with either no CPO or a CPO who is willing to oblige everything the CEO mentions. Everyone should realize the cost and expense involved with software development, even if you outsource the effort to somewhere cheap it is often one of the most expensive items you can undertake (not even going to mention that amount of software projects which have gone off the rails and been delivered badly, over budget or not matching the needs). So we must realize that....

Building software is expensive

Software craftsman, especially those that follow lean principles will bring to bear one of the hundred axioms of "Maximize the work not done". This is achieved with a change in the ways of working for the business and in the application of the BML (build measure learn) loop in such a way that will validate IF a story should even be done at all. We in the agile world are used to doing a spike solution and spending a sprint to build something quickly - what if we take this even further, and just have a manual process, or a questionnaire, an excel spreadsheet, or even a no code solution shown to prospects in a coffee shop. Do something that means you have 0 technical effort, don't even engage with your technical team and thus you are maximizing the work not done. Question the impact and the value of a story. You can save thousands, tens of thousands even hundreds of thousands in your business by adding to MUDA type 2 with the "Should I even do this at all?" approach. Shift attention to the stories that go in the top of the technical road map and eliminate as many as you can.

One method of keeping and narrowing the focus on the CEO's vision is to do an impact map in support of the product roadmap. Define the Why?, the Who?, the What? and the How? for each of the stories, but also add the impact - what difference will this make? What money will we earn if we do this story?, What will we save in time? What friction will we remove? If you don't know this you need to validate before you commit the expensive resources to doing this work. If a story doesn't deliver the What? for the Who? and solve the Why? then you have just wasted a lot of time and money. Your competitors who do this will beat you, as they will be more agile and they will have eliminated this form of waste.

If you take this laser like focus and eliminate all vanity projects, and any stories which don't deliver impact against the map you will have eliminated Muda in your product/technical map. You will have maximized the work not done and you will have solved the "Any fear of work today?" question. I have observed that software craftspeople will challenge and ask these types of questions "Why are we doing this?" If you can't answer this will you should think again

Software Craftspeople => Eliminate Muda

Less Muda => Better Business

Regards Julian