Lean is about value delivery, first

Tom Breur
14 July 2013

Lean is hot. Lean is hip. Lean is the way to go. I genuinely believe Lean provides a coherent framework that integrates building great software with change management, aligning this with corporate goals, and quantifying progress. But as much as I am a huge fan of Lean principles, Lean isn’t all it is claimed to be.

By far the biggest misconception has to be that Lean is about eliminating waste. It is not. Let me restate that: Lean is not about reducing waste. It is common sense that waste should be avoided. Agile practitioners talk about minimizing the work not done, which –to my mind– means much the same as eliminating waste.

Lean recognizes more different kinds of waste. Muda, Mura, muri, just like Eskimo’s were said to have (many) more words for snow than we do. Supposedly over 20 variations. To us, snow is just snow. Lean needs more words for “waste”, just like Eskimo’s need more words for snow. But still, Lean is not about reducing waste.

More than anything else, Lean is about creating value, because value –when defined as real customers’ willingness to pay for finished product– is the penultimate arrow that all business processes should pursue. As “agile” as possible. When value in the market place changes, business processes need to come along. As quick (“agile”) as possible.

Secondly, Lean is about creating “flow”, and the Toyota Production System has emphasized the importance of one-piece flow to be as agile as possible in following value in the market place. You can hardly imagine changing direction quicker than with the very next piece of work you create. That’s why one-piece flow contributes to agiity.

Eliminating waste really is the least of your concerns, but of course it is common sense that –ceterus paribus (all else being equal)– less waste is better. In whatever guise it comes (see Wikipedia on “waste”, or muda). Cheaper. More economical. If you can create the same amount of value, while work is flowing through your value chain equally smoothly (approaching one-piece flow), then, and only then, are we concerned with driving out waste. No sooner.

Reducing waste is really common sense. But then, as my teacher Jerry Weinberg so aptly pointed out to me: “Unfortunately, common sense isn’t all that common”… ☺