Optimizing the whole
The traditional software development model employs a project-based development paradigm. Each project has a specific objective that is pre-planned, budgeted, scheduled, and approved. This strategy is suboptimal over the life of a product as funding for new enhancements is never assured, and each project is constrained to complete a scope of work approved by the customer or executive sponsor. Such a development strategy is suboptimal on a number of levels.
Failing through suboptimization
Systems and Lean Thinking share a common understanding that systems fail through suboptimization. Recall from Chapter 4, Systems Thinking that we need to look at the whole of a system and not its individual parts if we are going to improve the performance of a system. Similarly, in the initial sections of this chapter on Lean Thinking, we found that the performance of an integrated system is bound by its slowest activity within the value stream. Both concepts are related.
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