Mark P. McDonaldDefects are the last of the seven sources of waste aka Muda in lean thinking. Defects in manufacturing are errors, damage, mistakes and other situations that do not confirm to standards and processes. Defects and defect elimination is the focus of a range of improvement methodologies and tools from traditional Total Quality Management (TQM) to Six Sigma.
Eliminate the defect and you eliminate the initial waste and rework required to repair the defect.
Defects occur throughout IT and therefore the opportunity to reduce waste and defects occur throughout your operations.
- Defects in service levels occur when people do not follow the process and procedure in providing customer and operational services. Its harsh to say that satisfying a customer by breaking the process is a sign of waste. Implement quality circles or other quality management techniques to manage the performance and improvements of these processes.
- Defects in software occur when the solution does not work as planned from a business, application or technical standard. A managed, tool enabled and personnel capability testing process is key to removing defects. Too many organizations either leave testing to the end of the project or the testing process to the personal preferences of the team and developers. Get a defined testing process and tools and drive them across the enterprise. The V-Model of testing, verification and validation, which was invented more than 30 years ago, is still among the most effective.
- Defects occur in hardware, systems software and other parts of the infrastructure. Failures in these areas, increased breakage, declining technical performance or capacity are all indicators of actual of emerging defects. Invest in upgrades and maintenance based on building resiliency into the infrastructure by raising the performance of each component. Remember redundancy to create resilience is waste! Your goal is simple, extend the mean time between failure (MTB) and minimize the impact of any failures.
- Defects occur in people when they tackle jobs for which they do not have the skills, understanding or authority to handle with a high probability of success. Take the time to put the right people in the right jobs and give them the opportunity to build the skills and experience for success. Beware the habitual hero in favor of capable and motivated people who will do good work.
Defects form the seventh and final source of waste in lean thinking, not because it’s the least important, but because defects are pervasive throughout an organization. Concentrating on this source of waste creates significant leverage for you and your enterprise as defects not only eliminate the error, but also the rework, lost of value, explanation and additional management oversight.
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4 responses so far ↓
1 Muda matters – sources of waste applied to IT October 15, 2009 at 7:53 am
[...] Defects – errors are the common focus of improvement disciplines like six-sigma. In IT defect [...]
2 Chris Bird October 26, 2009 at 6:44 pm
Defects and Agile practices are unlikely bedfellows, but let’s see if we can out them together.
In many of the Agile approaches, refactoring is a key technique. As we learn more about the component being built, so we may discover that we have it factored incorrectly. So when does refactoring stop being a valuable activity and start being fixing defects?
3 Mark McDonald October 26, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Chris an interesting question. Its important to recognize that a defect is an error that has made its way into the final product. Using that definition the refactoring would not involve fixing defects. But that is academic. I would suggest that once the agile team has implemented the core functionality required to meet the business need and achieve required performance then refactoring and iterations are complete. Building the solution beyond the business case and required performance without agreement would be more of a situation of waste based on overproduction, than defects.
4 Lean IT – Muda Matters July 13, 2011 at 6:23 am
[...] 7. Defects – errors are the common focus of improvement disciplines like six-sigma. In IT defect removal concentrates on verification, validation and testing. [...]
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