Lean concepts and software development – Example from Yahoo! Mail
I have been using Yahoo! Mail for last four to five years. I first started using it when they offered 4 MB of storage. It grew to few hundreds MB and then to 1GB and now they provide unlimited storage. Not only the storage impressed me their user friendly interface and ability to read RSS easily and closer look to MS Outlook, possibility to synchronize are features I really enjoy. This is a great example to show how fast the internet and e-commerce is expanding. But this is not why I am making this note on my blog today.
When yahoo mail launched its new Beta test you might have found it loaded very slowly and took long time before we can do anything. Later it was fixed and on their blog they share how. I think this is an application of lean thinking (whether they knew it or not) in software development.
According the blog initially yahoo mail tried loading every feature when it is launched on the browser. So it had to take lot of time in loading. But later they have broken down the loading in to small components and then they load one by one and some on demand. This reduces the user waiting time since they see what they want to see at the beginning. Some features are loaded only they are requested. So time and resources are not wasted on loading features which are not used frequently. This made user experience much better since users started to see what they wanted faster.
Isn’t this thinking pattern goes parallel with lean way of thinking? Lean suggest to process in small batches or ideally a piece at once. And process only when they are required to be done. The net effect will be less utilization of resources, faster and flexible system. Yahoo! Mail got it correct very soon and we the users are really benefiting from that.
When yahoo mail launched its new Beta test you might have found it loaded very slowly and took long time before we can do anything. Later it was fixed and on their blog they share how. I think this is an application of lean thinking (whether they knew it or not) in software development.
According the blog initially yahoo mail tried loading every feature when it is launched on the browser. So it had to take lot of time in loading. But later they have broken down the loading in to small components and then they load one by one and some on demand. This reduces the user waiting time since they see what they want to see at the beginning. Some features are loaded only they are requested. So time and resources are not wasted on loading features which are not used frequently. This made user experience much better since users started to see what they wanted faster.
Isn’t this thinking pattern goes parallel with lean way of thinking? Lean suggest to process in small batches or ideally a piece at once. And process only when they are required to be done. The net effect will be less utilization of resources, faster and flexible system. Yahoo! Mail got it correct very soon and we the users are really benefiting from that.
1 comments:
That is a nice example of lean thinking, loading the application page in small pieces!!
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