The concept of Lean pioneered by Toyota Motors to reduce waste in manufacturing was widely adopted across industries to improve efficiency including the IT industry. It was further popularised by the book of the same name by Tom and Mary Poppendieck and other growing literature.

The principle of ‘Lean Software Development’ is based on seven key principles such as

• Eliminating Waste
• Quality Enhancement
• Knowledge Amplification
• Delaying Commitment
• Speedy Delivery
• Optimization at Large

Eliminating Waste

Elimination is the key principle of lean software development and it fights to eliminate the following eight types of waste such as:

1. Redundant features and Code
2. More items in the task log than can be completed
3. Engineering Process Latencies
4. Ill-defined Requirements
5. Poor Communication
6. Quality Issues
7. Red Tape
8. Data Duplications

To identify and eliminate the above-listed wastages, regular meetings are conducted by project managers of software development companies in Dubai after each short iteration. This enables the team members to report progress regularly, identify bottlenecks and suggest the alterations to be implemented in the upcoming iterations, which promotes learning and brings in improvements to the code to be implemented in small manageable iterations. 

Quality Enhancement

Frequent testing of code, reporting errors while logging in, and addressing the upcoming issues take time and therefore increase the cost of software development; lean tries to address such issues even before they occur. 

With lean principles, engineering is kept flexible. Each iteration is followed promptly by an assessment. The time between each successive stage is always reduced as much as possible and compromises are frequently discussed and considered.

Knowledge Amplification

The importance of learning has always been important in software and lean software development in UAE has only reiterated the fact once more. Each time the code is written engineers reflect and incorporate the lessons they have learned in the previous iterations. This applies equally to lean and agile methodologies. 

To make sure that some knowledge isn’t rolled up exclusively by one engineer, lean methodology frequently employs paired programming. Apart from that, learning is broadened through ample code reviewing, frequent team meetings, and establishment of metrics from data that are applicable across teams.  

As a client, there is ample space to voice your feedback to the development team after completion of each iteration, collecting and reviewing future efforts in tune with the requirements sent by the company offering business technology advisory services is critical to all lean developments.

Delaying Commitment

Software development witnesses’ changes in the minute, not decades. So, it is not unlikely where the product meets the specs precisely while turning out to be irrelevant on the market by the date of release. Such scenarios arise due to changes in the business environment, in technologies your competitors use, and in the market’s overall course; changes that had left unaddressed during development.

Speedy Delivery 

Lean software development addresses this threat effectively. It always leaves room for improvement by delaying irreversible decisions until all the required experimentation is done and as many facts are gathered as possible; until you have a firm and comprehensive view of your requirements and there is no question about their relevance.

The methodology always attempts to develop flexibility in development, when new knowledge is provided, the team can readily act upon it without causing damage to the previous iterations. Like all new projects, these days face uncertainty, hence it is hard to overestimate.

The lean methodology of software development being part of the agile development focuses on speedy delivery. This essentially means that the project team would have to deliver the modules according to the milestones in the overall project plan. With a stable workflow that helps in understanding the value of the process and thus facilitates speedy results, achieving quick app development time is important.

Optimizing the Entire Value Stream

It is often noticed that mangers choose to break down a complex issue into multiple parts, which they then have their teams fix separately, without optimizing for the whole system. But lean software development focuses on enhancing the value of the entire value stream. Hence it is essential to find the right people and organize them into complete standalone teams.

Thus, it is ensured that there are no delays, disruptions, difficulties in communications and that would happen, for sure if team members are placed in different departments. 

Lean principles provide for the optimization for the entire team workflow, create unity across the team, inspire a sense of shared responsibility as well as shared objectives, which translates into superior performance.