The Art of Lean Software Development

Chapter 9. What Next?

It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.

—Epictetus

Fully implementing the core practices laid out in the last five chapters takes time. If you have implemented some or all of these practices, you have already seen significant increases in both productivity and quality. This means that you no longer need to be convinced; rather, you are excited about the possibilities and anxious to learn what to do next.

Lean Thinking and the Analysis Practices

Lean is a way of thinking, a certain perspective on improving productivity and quality. This mindset cuts across all areas to which Lean has been applied (or will be applied). The more you read about how Lean thinking has been applied in other areas of business, the more you will come to understand how to apply these techniques to your own situation in software development.

Overall, the Lean software development practices can be roughly divided into two categories: the concrete practices and the analysis practices. Up to this point we have been presenting the core concrete practices. In this chapter we introduce you to some of the analysis practices that will help you identify the remaining bottlenecks and how to further improve your software development process.

You could start your Lean software development journey with the analysis practices. The problem is that this would require you to more ...