Under lean software development, your team defines waste in its own terms. If the government, management or a customer requires something that the team decides does not add value, then you do the absolute minimum to satisfy the requirement. After all, anything beyond that would be waste, right?

It is far too easy to approach lean as a sort of toolbox or checklist of techniques--apply them all, you might think, and woo hoo, you are lean! Seddon once famously pointed out that the lean "toolbox" was designed to produce cars at a rate to match demand--a very different sort of business model than most of us who produce software. Seddon suggests that lean should be about a way of thinking. I agree.

However, many of the tools of lean production techniques described by Womack and Jones do still apply to . Consider them solutions that came from a different kind of thinking about manufacturing. The challenge of lean software development is not to copy the tools below; rather, it is to apply the same sort of thinking to our work and drive improvements in the flow of value.

Let's look at each of these carefully.