Eliminate before automating

I've encouraged in my earlier texts to push for more automation, because it typically helps to create products faster and with better quality. Therefore, it's beneficial for the business to encourage automation. However, there's one more thing that has even more value for the business - eliminating tasks that don't provide enough value for the business.

Traditionally, in SW development we focus on improving the way we develop, test and distribute SW. And with automation we help the process to be faster. With automation we are working harder, but not smarter.

When we develop SW too hastily, we create technical debt into our system. To keep our system in good shape, we should be cleaning it up every now and then, refactoring the code and dropping out features that are not used anymore. We need to do the same also for our product development process, refactoring the existing steps and above all, eliminating steps, tasks and items that don't provide additional value to the business but are slowing down the product development.

As an example, if we have been developing our products for years, our bug handling process has collected a lot of things into itself. Typically, some stakeholder makes noise that a certain piece of information would be vital to have in the bug report form, and that piece of information is added to the process without evaluating the real cost of adding it. This scheme is repeated over the years and we end up with a bug reporting process nobody is happy about. Still, none of the parties is ready to give up any of the bits and pieces each has been able to include in process.

Calculating costs for each item in the process might be difficult. Therefore, better approach to keep the process lean is to start from clean table and include only those steps and items that can be shown to have significant value. The team that succeeds in doing that well will have foundation for making innovative products, saving time by eliminating meaningless tasks.