Lean software development: is it feasible?

The Lean Aerospace Initiative originally began as Lean Aircraft Initiative (LAI) in the summer of 1992 at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The refashioning of Lean Aircraft Initiative to Lean Aerospace Initiative (LAI) took place in November 1997 to reflect the addition of Space Sector. A consortium of Air Force and 21 defense firms including the Boeing Co. and the erstwhile McDonnell Douglas was originally formed to investigate how the “Lean Principles” that were applied in the automobile industry particularly in Toyota could be adopted in the aerospace industry including electronics and avionics segments. It is no secret that the next millennium will be digital. Software will not only play an important role in the aerospace systems but almost in every aspect of our life It is the dream of every enterprise to have software developed cheaper, faster, and better. During the last several years many technologies, methodologies and software languages and development tools have emerged as the answers to the above dream. We are yet to accomplish that dream. Modern aircraft is nothing but a bunch of “flying” computers connected together and it is just “electronics in motion” or flying electronics. It is estimated that 50% of the development costs for any modern airplane is attributed to systems and a substantial portion to software development. Toyota is accepted not only as a leader in the automobile industry but as a world class manufacturing company which is very successful in adopting lean principles which they called Toyota Production System (TPS). This paper will briefly describe what is “Lean Thinking” and explore the feasibility of applying these principles to software development. It will include discussions on the emerging software development methods and Capability Maturity Model (CMM)[9] of the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) which gives us a framework. It will attempt to answer whether these lean principles can be applied to Software Development