Delivering value all starts with quality.
In the end, we want to deliver customer value, that’s our number one goal, right?
How can we achieve this without quality?
If we ship products with a certain level of defects at a price that’s reasonable, it’s only a matter of time until a competitor takes over our market share.
They can do this easily by investing their money in expensive machines and testing equipment and hire more people to perform rework and inspections.
This is where the power of continuous improvement can help us turn the tides. Fostering an eye for quality by fixing small defects in our process one after another.
It takes no large investments to work more efficiently and learn from our mistakes. We don’t need extra resources or expensive tools.
Take a look at the agile development process, where retrospectives help us to search for improvements. It is a low-cost practice with a major benefit.
If we as a team are getting more and more reliable in delivering our sprint commitments, with less rework and defects, we are able to ship more value to the customer at the same cost.
Investment = couple of hours / sprint.
I’m currently reading Gemba Kaizen, a book about improving your business by continuously making small improvements where it really matters, the factory floor where products get built. Very interesting and applicable to the world of software development.
