What does it mean to be Lean?

Note: I wrote this post originally on my first blog, Random Thoughts from a CTO, but thought it was good enough to share with the readers here.

Lean can mean different things to different people.

For some, lean can refer to how you maintain your physical shape through dieting and exercise. For those that have been successful in staying lean, they will say that it takes a paradigm shift of how you take care of your body through what you eat and how you exercise. When you start the process of becoming lean, you begin to cut out those things that are unhealthy and make you fat. You begin to eat better. You begin to feel better. You start seeing results in the mirror. You also are constantly monitoring your weight, heartbeat, blood pressure, calories, etc through the process. For some of us, myself included, we get lazy once we reach this point and start falling back to bad habits -- at first, a mistake here and there on what we eat, or missing a workout or two. Then, you stop getting on the scale and recording your results. Then, before you know it you are not lean again!

For others, lean can refer to how you maintain your financial status through budgeting and tracking your expenses. For those that have been successful in saving money and making more through investing, they will say that it takes a paradigm shift of what you do with your money and where it goes. When you start the process of saving money, you begin to determine where your expenses are going and which of those expenses you can eliminate that takes you from your goals. You also look at ways to increase your income with those savings through investments. You also look to remove your debt. You begin to save money. You begin to feel better. You start seeing results in your portfolio. You also are constantly monitoring your income flow, expenses and net worth through the process. For some of us, in this case myself not included, we get lazy once we reach this point and start falling back to bad habits of spending excess money, getting into debt, and eventually not saving money. Then, before you know it you are not financially set again!

In the software engineering industry, lean is now referring to your cycle time - how quickly you get to a working solution for the end customer without losing quality. For those that have been successful with this approach, they will say that it takes a paradigm shift of how you development and manage your software solutions. When you start the process of reducing cycle times, you begin to determine where communication and collaboration need to happen, what activities or processes take away from reducing cycle times, how we do our jobs and the way we interact with other areas. You will begin to see results. You will see the customer is more satisfied. You will find better ways to get your work done. You also are constantly monitoring your estimates, work completed, costs, quality much better. For some of us, myself a little bit, it is very easy to fall back into old habits of traditional and formal processes because you are so familiar with them and may get discouraged early on in not seeing immediate results you are hoping. You then begin to see things slip, take longer and less of a feeling of accomplishment either by the team or the end customer. Then, before you know it you are feeling that things aren't getting done as they should!

There are many other scenarios that this lean approach can take - time management, stress management, strategy, project management, the list goes on and on. What is getting in the way of your goals? How do you improve on those goals? What do you do to maintain those goals? How do you measure the process of those goals?

Focus on the goals and maintain discipline to see it through! This is what lean should mean!