路宁(luning)的博客

	Very Fat - Manager defines waste All what we spend time and resource on are needed, valuable and not waste. Nearly zero waste in out work.
	Fat - Oganization defines waste There may be some waste in our work, like the endless meetings. We admit 15% of our work is waste.
	Lean - Customer defines waste We generally treat what a reasonable customer doesn't want to pay for as waste. A reasonable customer understands why we spend time on testing and refactoring, and is willing to pay for it. Over documentation, unused features, efforts on defects and work in progress are all waste. There is always new waste identified from time to time.
	Very Lean - Critical customer defines waste We treat what a critical customer don't want to pay for as waste. Management, test, integration, refactoring and estimation are unfortunately on the list. They are necessory waste to prevent bigger waste. Doing them frequently, in small pieces, automaticly, early and with shared responsibility are pretty much the guidlines we rely on to minimize them. Sometime we cann't resist challenging everything and feel crazy, maybe we need a doctor at this time.

When people talk about a software project, they usually think of a car as the analogy in manufacturing industry. With this analogy, somebody believe that it makes no sense to 'translate' practices/ideas from manufactoring world because there are so many obvious differences/gaps between them. This thought also limits us from learning more from TPS(Toyota Production System) practices.

This is a misleading analogy. It's a group of cars designed, manufactured and delivered for a particular market within a period, which are compared to a software project, not just a single car. Below are more analogies:

Software Concept	Misleading Analogy in Manufacturing	Proper Analogy in Manufacturing
a software project	a car	a group of cars designed, manufactured and delivered for a particular market within a period. They may end up with great variety.
a software feature	a feature/part of a car	a car satisfying a customer
the lifecycle of a software project	the manufacturing stage of a car	a loop including steps of design, manufacture, deliver, after service, feedback, refine design, ...

Given the proper anology above, most TPS practices/ideas become inspiring and meaningful for software development.

And, it is meaningless to compare standard parts with standard software components in context of standard, the two industries share the same pursuit of the standard/better ways of adding values and solving problems in fact.