Your Guide to Adopting Lean Development with the Agile 8 Wastes Checklist
Within Lean Development (a form of the Agile methodology), the goal is to cut out as much waste from a work process as possible. Optimizing your work process with Lean Development means removing a delay on project commitment and delivering results faster. An effective way to achieve this is through the 8 Wastes Checklist.
Who should use this process?
It’s important to note that Lean Development is not as structured as some of the other forms of Agile, such as the Scrum method or the Kanban method (read up on all of the Agile methods here).
This Agile method is great for teams who are focused on quality and not quantity and need to find out which parts of their process are non-essential.
What is the 8 Wastes Checklist?
This checklist is a list that you go through to help you and your team remove processing obstacles that get in the way of providing value to the customer (source). The checklist also helps you identify where you are wasting time and money internally and where adjustments should be made.
The 8 Wastes include the following:
Defects
Overproduction
Waiting
Non-utilized Talent
Transportation
Inventory
Motion
Extra-processing
Defects
These are any elements of your products or services that are not to spec and will require resources to fix.
Overproduction
Identify what you have too much of — products, people, services offered to your client — producing more than you can sell is a waste of time and money.
Waiting
This is where you examine where your process stalls and team members are stuck waiting before they can get work done.
Non-Utilized Talent
Identify which of your employees are not engaged in the task(s) they have been assigned to, or are not being used to the best of their abilities.
Transportation
This refers to any unnecessary items or information being moved around, or anything that is being moved when it doesn’t need to be, using up valuable resources.
Inventory
Identify anything valuable that is sitting idle — people, ideas, products, etc.
Motion
This refers to people or information that has to move around due to a poorly planned workspace or process.
Extra Processing
Where are you taking unnecessary steps in your process? Is there something that has become redundant that can be cut?
Stormboard’s 8 Wastes Checklist Template
Stormboard’s 8 Wastes Checklist Template is perfect if your team is looking to cut down as much waste as possible within your day-to-day work process.
The eight sections allow you to look critically at every possible factor that is causing unnecessary work, ultimately streamlining your process.
Are you interested in trying out Stormboard’s 8 Wastes Checklist Template with your team? Check out our FREE trial here.
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