10 Forms of Agile Waste to Avoid

"We've got three R's we're going to talk about today
We've got to learn to
Reduce, reuse, recycle"

- Jack Johnson

While often thought of as a "lean" process, agile projects can be full of waste. This waste can lead to increased project time and cost, lower productivity, and a failure to deliver the value customers may be expecting.

The agile project manager must learn to manage and control the following 10 forms of waste common in agile projects:

1. Bureaucracy - red tape that will delay the team
2. Churn - task switching costs in overhead
3. Defects and rework - doing things right the first time is best
4. Delays - delays in obtaining resources and other delays add time to the production of value
5. Gold-plated product - provide what the customer needs
6. Hand-offs- hand offs cause further delays and contribute to lost knowledge
7. Ineffective communications - as with all projects, communications is critical
8. Lost knowledge - with minimal documentation, critical knowledge can get lost
9. Partially completed product - incomplete sprints detract from delivering value
10. Unplanned localization - not just for software projects, unplanned localization is time consuming

Until each form of waste has been covered, each month will have at least one post that examines each waste in more detail, including causes, effects, and solutions.  This article will link to them, so return periodically if you want to learn more about managing a specific form of agile waste.