A lean idea for software developers
When I learned the principles of lean manufacturing and its application I realized the world is full of opportunities. There are plenty of opportunities if we are looking for improvement. I published a similar article earlier on application of lean concepts in software industry with an example from new yahoo mail. Today when I was working with my laptop I got this idea.
My computer hard drive capacity is almost full. It only has 10% of free space. It gets slower day by day. So I wanted to find out the exact reason why my hard drive is running out of space. I did a check on capacity utilization and found out considerable amount of my hard drive is consumed by programs installed including the operating system. So why programs takes this much of space? Most of the programs are loaded with much functionality. When we install the programs most of these components are getting installed without our knowledge. Why is it getting installed without our knowledge? Actually most of the programs come with the selection in installation process where people can select what they want to install. But most people do not install software every day and they are not experts on this either. So they want to be safe. They simply select all the sub components and proceed (if we put it in more lean way, they create an inventory just in case of there will be a problem). In fact most of the times we even do not know whether these features are available in the software we use every day. I haven’t touched most of the libraries available even in the MS Office. But they get installed (or we select them to install) and use up the capacity which is a limited resource in a computer.
If you go through my approach to find the root cause to the problem of running out of capacity in hard drive, you will see I have taken “5 WHY?” approach to get to the root cause of the problem. Although I haven’t asked why 5 times exactly as in text book lean approach it bought me to the root cause of the problem.
How we can stop people from installing unnecessary components and make them feel comfortable in not installing all in the first instance. My suggestion is first to not to give the user the trouble of selecting what they want (Unless if it is a real professional user) and then to install only the core components of the software in the first instance and then load the attached sub components on demand when users request it (In lean context this is creating a system which will stop problems by itself and known as Pokayoke or mistake proofing). Till that time these parts of the system can be stored in a compressed form in the hard drive or can be made available through the internet or via a DVD.
Lean thinking, 5 Why technique, and with waste elimination back in my mind I think I found a reasonable solution to the problem. Lean manufacturing is universal not because of its application but because of its thinking. This is a great example of that.
In a concluding note, I know some of the software is already working like this. I invite all of my readers to add your comments and your views.
My computer hard drive capacity is almost full. It only has 10% of free space. It gets slower day by day. So I wanted to find out the exact reason why my hard drive is running out of space. I did a check on capacity utilization and found out considerable amount of my hard drive is consumed by programs installed including the operating system. So why programs takes this much of space? Most of the programs are loaded with much functionality. When we install the programs most of these components are getting installed without our knowledge. Why is it getting installed without our knowledge? Actually most of the programs come with the selection in installation process where people can select what they want to install. But most people do not install software every day and they are not experts on this either. So they want to be safe. They simply select all the sub components and proceed (if we put it in more lean way, they create an inventory just in case of there will be a problem). In fact most of the times we even do not know whether these features are available in the software we use every day. I haven’t touched most of the libraries available even in the MS Office. But they get installed (or we select them to install) and use up the capacity which is a limited resource in a computer.
If you go through my approach to find the root cause to the problem of running out of capacity in hard drive, you will see I have taken “5 WHY?” approach to get to the root cause of the problem. Although I haven’t asked why 5 times exactly as in text book lean approach it bought me to the root cause of the problem.
How we can stop people from installing unnecessary components and make them feel comfortable in not installing all in the first instance. My suggestion is first to not to give the user the trouble of selecting what they want (Unless if it is a real professional user) and then to install only the core components of the software in the first instance and then load the attached sub components on demand when users request it (In lean context this is creating a system which will stop problems by itself and known as Pokayoke or mistake proofing). Till that time these parts of the system can be stored in a compressed form in the hard drive or can be made available through the internet or via a DVD.
Lean thinking, 5 Why technique, and with waste elimination back in my mind I think I found a reasonable solution to the problem. Lean manufacturing is universal not because of its application but because of its thinking. This is a great example of that.
In a concluding note, I know some of the software is already working like this. I invite all of my readers to add your comments and your views.
1 comments:
Thanks for introducting lean concepts and their usage in different perspecive.
Lean is better approach for saving many things, like cost, material,time and resources.
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