Your Development Pipeline: DOWNTIME and the 8 wastes

While the concept of the "waste" is primarily seen in its original environment of manufacturing, in software development, the same concept can be adopted to look at areas of improvement through various cycles. You see, Toyota and Tiashi Ono identified the 8 wastes listed below, which create the acronym "D.O.W.N.T.I.M.E.," to assess any impacts to its assembly line, and quickly remove any blockers from production. In the same way, the 8 wastes can be used in software engineering and development through its agile and iterative processes of development, testing, integration, delivery, and deployment to identify "waste" and continuously deliver better code. While everyone is guilty of having waste in their processes at one time or another, being aware of the need for change will ensure that you are more efficient and produce a better quality product. Are you guilty of any of these?

D.O.W.N.T.I.M.E.

• Defects

• Information, products and services that are inaccurate or incomplete

• Example: Defects after being released to a QA branch for testing rather than being tested prior to deployment

• Overproduction

• Making more earlier and faster than the next process needs it

• Example: Backlog of features ready for testing, without the adequate testing resources or automation in place to handle capacity

• Waiting

• Delay in goods or services by man, machine, information, etc.

• Example: Excessive cycle times between processes; exceeding SLAs

• Non-utilized Talent

• Not utilizing intellectual capital (experience, skills, knowledge, creativity)

• Example: Lack of empowerment; A “that’s not my job” attitude

• Touches

• Unnecessary movement of materials around an organization

• Example: Inefficient flow where there are excessive “touches”; Excessive transfers between quality teams, developers, and release management

• Inventory

• Excess of the appropriate quantity at the appropriate time

• Example: Unoccupied desktops with operating computers, phones, etc. consuming electricity; unnecessary on-premise hardware when cloud solution has been implemented

• Motion

• Unnecessary movement that does not add value to the product or service

• Example: Opening multiple software applications and having to click around user interface

• Extra-processing

• Effort that does not add value to the service provided from the customer’s perspective

• Example: Work-arounds and unused information; excessive forms that are never reviewed or utilized