Making architecture visible to improve flow management in lean software development

Robert L. Nord, Ipek Ozkaya, Raghvinder S. Sangwan

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

28 Scopus citations

Abstract

Lean practices use the principle of Little's law to improve the flow of value to the end user by eliminating sources of waste from a software development process. Little's law defines throughput as a ratio of work in process and cycle time. Increasing throughput (or productivity) requires continuously improving (that is, decreasing) cycle time while ensuring that the work-in-process limit doesn't exceed the capacity available to process the work. This article shares experiences regarding the role architecture plays in lean software management practices. Release plans that give as much emphasis to architecturally significant tasks as to feature-based high-priority functionality can achieve better outcomes by avoiding conditions that lead to wasted time and effort. The application of lean software development practices can improve with better practical guidance on how to manage architecture flow as well as feature flow.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number6226344
Pages (from-to)33-39
Number of pages7
JournalIEEE Software
Volume29
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - 2012

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Software

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