Lean practices in software development projects: A literature review

Abstract

Rapidly increasing customer demands, competition, continuous changing scenario and accelerating pace of technological developments have put tremendous pressure on the business organization to deliver quality products at lower cost. On the same lines the software development (SD) companies need to deliver quality codes with new features at reduced cost. This can be achieved through Lean to software development projects. As the lean has been considered in different ways and has been implemented to varying extent in different sectors of the economy this paper aims to investigate as to how "lean" is viewed in software development projects and status of implementation in software development projects. First, application of lean in different types of projects viz. construction, healthcare, aerospace, new product development and service is discussed. Secondly, application of lean to SD projects is investigated at three levels: Philosophy, principles (value, value stream, flow, pull and perfection) and practices/tools. The effect of lean on performance (inventory, lead time, customer satisfaction, cost, and business value) of SD projects is also analyzed. Further, "Leagile" software development and agile dominance is explored through this paper.