Lean management principles are widely adopted across multiple industries worldwide because of its primary ideology that ensures waste reduction and quality delivery. The principle of lean software development is essential to organize teams’ working methodologies that deliver high value in their consumer results.
While this method is pretty easier, the product managers need to understand the 7 fundamental principles of lean techniques to improve working efficiencies-
Here are seven principles that can transform your product development process if applied correctly.
1. Identify value
Great product managers understand the significance of asking the essential details to comprehend the project’s big-picture objectives. Ignoring this first step is risking the resources on the invaluable things.
It starts with understanding “what” should be done and “how” to achieve it to justify the “why” of the entire project. The whole discussion revolves around the “why” to identify the higher-order objective of the work.
Without sharing a strong buy-in vision for the product with your team, the team efforts become scattered. Additionally, when you can answer the “why” at all levels, it’s a fundamental responsibility of product managers to set the direction of the product.
Therefore the process should answer the strategic questions: What are we trying to achieve with this project? How is it beneficial for our company? Does it align with our business’s vision in the future?
2. Map the value stream
Once you have all the pre-requisite information in a place that will add value and impact the process, your team will contribute to each step in providing a quality product. When you understand the value addition (whom you’re serving, for what, and how), you can allocate the different departments’ contributions.
Mapping the value streams helps the lean teams to apprehend how the value will flow through the organization and where it might get stuck. It’s a physical map that includes each segment in the process and how it will glide through the business.
The different segments of the organization which gets contributes to the final product-
- Research and development
- Human resources
- Production
- Marketing
3. Eliminate waste
Waste elimination is the other fundamental principle in lean management principle. The core principle of lean is to ensure high quality by filtering out unnecessary processings. Whether in development or documentation, the idea is to maximize productivity by cutting wastage.
Waste is the term allocated to any process that doesn’t add customer value. It can be unnecessary features or changes in a product that isn’t according to the customer’s requirements or don’t please them anymore. Any element or function that doesn’t yield direct value or might distract the team should be removed.
There’s tons of waste secretion in software development which lean aims to reduce/eliminate. These are the most prominent ones-
- Improper communication among internal stakeholders.
- Excessive functionalities in the code.
- Assuring functionalities before making a robust plan
- Conflicting information regarding delivery schedules.
- Making Tweaks in the product without prior announcements.
4. Respecting its people
One fundamental principle that made Lean famous within big organizations that value culture is its regard for people involved.
This principle often takes a side seat when other demands are at stake, which is also why businesses do not reach their desired heights.
In an industry that takes software developers and other professionals to be easily interchangeably. It’s essential to redirect the focus on respecting professionals who build an organization.
Exemplary communication, onboarding, and training make the team efficient highly deliverable.
Thus, what a great Product manager should ensure is if he’s leading the team with respect and executes respectful practices.
Ensuring respect means implementing empathy, listening to the team’s point of view, quick responses, and training protocols.
Businesses that ensure lean management principles ensure the following-
- Active information sharing on major project changes.
- Communicating the professional progress and roadblocks.
- Active and clear communication among team members.
- Collaboration and shared vision.
- Shared responsibilities.
5. Create and encourage knowledge
The lean methodology emphasizes creating clear documentation for each stage of the process. It ensures that the team has sufficient knowledge and tools to finish a high-quality product. Additionally, it’s also essential to document the processes so that the next time the team works on a similar project, it saves time understanding what works effectively.
A great Product Manager will encourage the team to learn and evolve and cultivate a space where teams exchange knowledge. It’s a great way to reflect on the work performances and identify room for improvement.
Following tools create an environment of ongoing effective learning for lean teams-
- Developers training.
- Constructive code feedbacks.
- Proactive teams in sharing informative transformations.
- Maintaining documentation and having them checked by non-developers for clarity.
6. Establish pull
The ultimate goal of lean is quality product delivery which means whether the customer could extract/receive value from the product. It has reversed the mindset on how businesses perceive the idea of “quality product.” It transitioned the focus from what the company can deliver to what the customers require.
The idea is how the consumer will pull value from the product and make a “customer-centric” product. This notion gave birth to the lean principle by the manufacturing Toyota. They shifted their focus from production, raw materials, and storage to create a product that delivers what consumers require. Understanding these requirements helped them provide a realistic, cost-time, and space-effective model.
Product managers should move ahead by answering a fundamental question- How the approach can adapt according to the changing consumer requirements and when they need it.
7. Quick result delivery
From waste reduction to workflows, all the principles of Lean work together to ensure a quality and quick delivery to customers.
By quality and quick delivery, we mean teams should not compromise with the quality value of the work. That’s why lean avoid going back to the same processing and working on it again and again. Lean development encourages working on a simple solution and enhancing its performance with consumer feedback.
Quick delivery is crucial, but successful quality delivery is imperial. Therefore the Product Manager should identify what might slow his team down? What can he do to improve the team’s productivity? Most of the time, the challenge is to organize flexible deadlines and a clear product vision and goal that impacts delivery speed.
