This article by Rob Knight first appeared on https://fluxus.io/insights/project-management-lean-waste-and-golf
One of the key principles of “lean” philosophy is that we should minimise waste. However, when following lean principles in software development, it can be possible to interpret “minimise waste” somewhat too literally. In particular, it can become easy to believe that writing code is wasteful unless you’re absolutely sure it’s going to be used without further refactoring being required. After all, why write something that’s going to have to change later?
There is a temptation to play “output golf”, where the aim is to produce the minimum number of outputs…
