Lean software development – what exactly are we talking about?

As the Software Engineering landscape continues to evolve and new paradigms are introduced, there can be a tendency for both industry and academia to enthusiastically embrace new approaches and march forward under whatever banner conventional wisdom has decided to adopt. One such banner is Lean Software Development, a paradigm that continues to see a growth in interest driven by the need for cost reductions within industry. The term lean attracts the attention of business, but precisely how it applies within software development is still being debated. In addition, its relationship to the better understood agile methodologies is also a topic for debate. Having been drawn into this research area ourselves, we present here a review of Lean Software Development and try to distil out for the reader some understanding of this somewhat undefined topic. We conclude with some thoughts on where this subject might go to from here.