How long does it take you to deliver a feature into production, from inception to shipment? If you can’t easily answer that question, it’s time to do some measuring. You can work to improve this metric over time, but unless you already know it, you’re just making wild guesses. It’s…

Do you ever find you’re swamped by thousands of tiny things that stop you from ever making any real progress? In software this sort of thing happens pretty often. Perhaps more often than in other industries — we’ve even come up with a handy name for those awkward niggles. …

Have you ever built some software that turned out not to be very good at what it was supposed to do? You’re not alone. …

Going Faster: Issue 17 — The Seven Wastes are an idea from lean manufacturing, and I’m exploring how they relate to software development. Last time was over production, and this week I’m looking at the last one: defects. It’s no great revelation to say that bugs slow us down, but they might slow us down…

Going Faster: Issue 16 — The Seven Wastes are an idea from lean manufacturing, and I’m exploring how they relate to software development. Last time was over processing, and this week is over production. Over production is, very simply, building stuff that isn’t needed or that nobody uses. Here’s a fun tweet that suggests some…

Going Faster: Issue 15 — The Seven Wastes are an idea from lean manufacturing, and I’m exploring how they relate to software development. Last time was waiting, and this week is over processing. Over processing can be summarised as working too hard. If you’ve ever built in a caching layer “just in case”, if you’ve…

Going Faster: Issue 14 — The Seven Wastes are an idea from lean manufacturing, and I’m exploring how they relate to software development. Last week was motion, and this week is waiting. How long do you spend waiting for things? Well, that’s not actually important. …

Going Faster: Issue 13 — The Seven Wastes are an idea from lean manufacturing, and I’m exploring how they relate to software development. Last week was inventory, and this week is motion. Motion is the movement of people or things around work. This is why car factories use moving production lines — it’s much easier…

Going Faster: Issue 12 — The Seven Wastes are an idea from lean manufacturing, and I’m exploring how they relate to software development. Last week was transport, and this week is inventory. Inventory is any product that hasn’t yet been delivered, so in manufacturing that’s components, materials, and unfinished products. In software the closest match…