Lean Waste Management for Agile Teams: How to find and eliminate waste in Scrum.

Lean thinking is not the Lean Startup. In the latest 2020 Scrum Guide revision, I was happy to finally see the admission that Scrum is founded on Lean thinking. Lean thinking is a set of values and principles that has been applied to Japanese manufacturing since the 1930s. It focuses on continuous improvement, respect for people, value creation, value stream, flow, pull, and the pursuit of perfection. One of the key techniques in Lean thinking is the identification and elimination of waste.

The eight types of waste that Lean identifies are used in conjunction with Kaizen (continuous improvement) to identify and remove the waste.

In Agile, these types of waste often surface as impediments. These impediments and the action needed to remove them can be addressed at any point by the Scrum team. It is expected that the Scrum team identifies ways to improve at least once per Sprint, specifically, during the Sprint retrospective event. Once a waste removal opportunity has been identified, it is added to the Product Backlog and prioritized accordingly so that it can be addressed in upcoming Sprint(s). It is useful to know the different types of waste that might exist in your process. Lean has eight different types of waste.

1. Defects – Fixing things that were not made properly.

2. Overproduction – Making more than what is needed.

3. Waiting – Time spent idle before starting the next production step. “Waiting” is an indicator of start and stop, or an uneven production. Essentially, waiting for waste is the opposite of establishing a production flow.

4. Unused Talent – People are not utilized to their maximum potential.

5. Transportation – Unnecessary or excessive movement of people, information, tools, assets, inventory, or equipment.

6. Excess Inventory – Unnecessary or excessive items to create the product or in process.

7. Motion – Unnecessary movement within the workplace.

8. Extra-Processing – Adding non-value tasks to process when a shorter or simpler approach can do.

It may be difficult to connect the different types of waste for knowledge workers, especially for software-related products. Here are examples and techniques for removing the types of waste you may encounter in an Agile team.

The Japanese word for waste is “muda”. Agile continues to take a cue from Lean Management and is popularizing the word “muda” as organizations work to create a culture of continuous improvement. Waste removal is a key element of continuous improvement in Agile. Identifying and removing waste will help to optimize your organization. Look for these types of waste in your organization and you’ll be on your way to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of your Agile teams.