Approaches to implementing the lean methodology in software development: A survey

Approaches to implementing the lean methodology in software development: A survey

Behzad Boostanchi, Behrouz Minaei

Abstract

Lean thinking is making its way into the software industry these days. After its successful application in manufacturing, some researchers tried to bring it into the software engineering field, which has resulted in a couple of practical approaches. However, no structured survey of the existing literature in this field has been conducted so far. In this paper, we studied the different proposed approaches to using the lean discipline in software production. We tried to classify these approaches into three main categories: Lean as a subset of agile, Lean as a standalone methodology, and Lean hybrid approaches. We reviewed the significant developments in each category and outlined their possible challenges. Then we propose a higher-level classification. This survey concludes with a short discussion on the differences between lean and other software development methodologies.

Keywords

Software Engineering, Development Methodologies, Agile, Lean, Categorization, Survey

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