Local optimisation

My weekend was a curious mix of thinking about how we improve as a business and listening to Bob Dylan – in part triggered by the fantastic season of films and documentaries on BBC4 at the minute.

While I’m sure that Bob wasn’t talking about lean development when he wrote it, some lyrics from Idiot Wind struck me as appropriate:

“You didn’t know it, you didn’t think it could be done, in the final end he won the wars After losin’ every battle.”

It reminds me of something I read about Lance Armstrong, who consistently wins the Tour-de-France, but has a relatively low rate of winning the individual stages. Winners value pacing over pace.

Local optimisation is dangerous because it causes overproduction in stages of the process that are not on the critical path.

Donald Knuth said it most succintly in terms of development: “We should forget about small efficiencies, about 97% of the time. Premature optimization is the root of all evil.”