Reducing waste by automation

Reducing waste is one of the key concerns of agile development, and is a defining character for Kanban, where blockages are ruthlessly identified and resolved. Timeboxing provides a low-cost means of identifying waste and a framework for tackling it, but doesn’t provide many solutions on its own.

For tasks that continually cause blockages, such as the release process, or testing, automation is a good way to eliminate the repetition, and the chance of human error. Indeed, the engineers in the audience will immediately recognise the key drivers for Continuous Deployment and Continuous Integration in the examples I’ve given.

And yet, whilst we appreciate the gains it can make, how many teams set aside specific time in their schedules for “automation” as an activity alongside “refactoring”, “upgrading dependencies” and “deleting dead code (including tests)”.

Check your backlog, and if automation, in some form, isn’t there, ask yourself why those repetitive manual steps still exist in your workflow and why they have priority over the other work you have to do.