Enhanced agile software development - hybrid paradigm with LEAN practice

Abstract

In recent years the interest on improving software paradigms to meet the rapid changing environments has become a prime research area in software engineering. Agile software development emerged as a result of these studies. Agile practice is a customer oriented, light-weight software development paradigm, best suited for small size development teams in projects under vague and changing requirements. Parallel to this, LEAN manufacturing introduced a massive paradigm shift to production processes in different industries. Later, the LEAN software development, a derived process from LEAN manufacturing emerged. Despite its main focus on defect minimization, it was considered another facet of agile practice due to the flexibility offered by both. In this study we emphasize the key differences between the two practices and examine the possible improvements to the agile software development from LEAN principles that ultimately leads to a hybrid practice.