Wastes (muda)

Delay

• Slow internal communication. 
• Waiting for other activities, teams, resources, processes, artifacts. 
• Too much work in progress (WIP) also create delay.

Delay increase the risk that an initial specification become obsolete before deployment. Business and technological environment changes may occur during the waiting time.

A pull system like Kanban system can highly reduce delay.

Overproduction

Unnecessary code and functionality. 

Very costly, especially early in the flow because it prohibits the smooth flow of information and actually degrades quality and productivity by creating extra noise.

• Don't build features that nobody needs right now.
• Don't write more specs than you can code.
• Don't write more code than you can test.
• Don't test more code than you can deploy.

A scheduling system like DBR can highly reduce overproduction waste

Rework

• Unclear requirement
• Defects

Using a standard template for requirements like user story improve requirement clarity

Tremendous cost to organizations.

Associated costs include:

•  external and internal communication,
•  bug review meeting
•  re-inspecting,
•  coding
•  testing
•  rescheduling,
•  capacity loss.

Through Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) and by focusing on quality improvement, there is a huge opportunity to reduce defects.

Inventory

In software development, inventory refer to requirements.

Excess inventory tends to:

• Hide and delays the identification of problems
• Increases lead times
• Inhibits communication.

By achieving a seamless flow between development activities, we can reduce inventories and their associated costs.

Transportation

• Information: cost incursion which adds no value to the product like manual reports, internal documentation maintenance.
• Physical: When team members are not physically located together. When walking in the office is required for team collaboration is a form of transportation waste.

Overhead

• Managerial activities not producing real value.
• Bureaucracy.
• Extra processes: frequently appearing when trying to fix a particular problem without regard for the whole system.

Underutilization
 of employees

• Not capitalizing on employees' creativity
• Not using employees knowledge, skills and talents