There are seven things that slow your software team down. Learning to conquer each of them is the key delivering faster. Originating in the Japanese manufacturing industry in the middle of the 20th century, the ideas behind the seven wastes are still hugely relevant to software development today. I explained each one and how it slows you down, then explained how you can defeat the seven wastes and deliver faster than ever before.

1. SOFTWARE’S
Seven
Deadly
Wastes
Jez Halford
@jezhalford

2. Jez Halford
Software Development Consultant
I help software teams to go faster
@jezhalford
jezhalford.com
medium.com/@jezhalford

3. What slows you down?

4. 無駄
Muda

5. The Seven Wastes

7. •TRANSPORT•

8. 1
“Transport”
● Handovers between teams or
developers
● Bouncing back and forth
between Dev and QA teams
● Deploying to different
environments
Movement of the work

9. 1
“Transport”
● Pairing and collaboration
● Continuous Integration
● AutomationMovement of the work

11. •INVENTORY•

12. 2
“Inventory”
● Abandoned Work
● Work In Progress
● Working on several things at
once
Undelivered work

13. 2
“Inventory”
● Reduce your lead time
○ Feature toggles
○ Smaller deliverable units
○ Branch by abstraction
● Visualise your work in
progress
● Stop starting and start
finishing
Undelivered work

14. “Inventory”
Undelivered work

16. •MOTION•

17. 3
“Motion”
● Task switching
● Irregular meetings
● Hot desking
● Building new environments
Movement of people around the work

18. “Motion”
● Reducing inventory also
reduces motion
● Get Rhythm!
Movement of people around the work

20. •WAITING•

21. 4
“Waiting”
● Waiting for other teams
● Waiting for outside input
● Waiting for clarificationDelays in delivering the work

22. 4
“Waiting”
● Consider the whole system
● Take ownership
● Talk to peopleDelays in delivering the work

24. •OVER PROCESSING•

25. 5
“Over Processing”
● Gold plating
● Solving imaginary scaling
issues
● Writing “libraries” instead of
operational code
Working too hard

26. “Over Processing”
● Deliver often
● Base performance
improvements on evidence
● Refactor when you need to
Working too hard

28. •OVER PRODUCTION•

29. 6
“Over Production”
● 64% of built software features
are rarely or never used*
● Every feature has a cost
● Developing useless features is
doubly wasteful
Doing useless work
* From a limited study in 2002 - probably nonsense

30. 6
“Over Production”
● Strong product ownership
● Fast feedback
● Remove stuff that isn’t usedDoing useless work

32. •DEFECTS•

33. 7
“Defects”
● Bugs in production are bad
● Bugs before production are
still bad
Working on the work

34. 7
“Defects”
● Automated tests
● Dev/Prod parity
● Continuous integration
● Shared understanding
○ Example mapping
○ OOPSI
○ BDD
Working on the work

35. Transport
Inventory
Motion
Waiting
Over Processing
Over Production
Defects

36. ● Ship small things often
● Automate everything you can
● Work on one thing at a time
● Maintain a regular pace
● Deal with problems and
complexity early
● Prioritise working code over
perfect code
Transport
Inventory
Motion
Waiting
Over Processing
Over Production
Defects

37. Thanks
@jezhalford
jezhalford.com
medium.com/@jezhalford