The eighth waste: Wishful thinking

- "Bend it in!"

These words were repeated again and again by the commercial director at a somewhat chaotic meeting in the organization I was working with. We were under heavy pressure from our competitors, and we needed new features. Fast. So we would somehow bend them into the existing product.

Of course those features were never actually bent in. Thinking that it would be possible to just bend something that complex into an existing product without any trace of a holistic approach was just plain wishful thinking.

But this experience ten years ago wasn’t complete waste, because it opened up my eyes to what I now call the 8th waste: Wishful thinking. 

In Lean software development, we talk of the seven wastes - Partially done work, Extra features, Relearning, Handoffs, Delays, Task switching and Defects. (These were defined by Mary and Tom Poppendieck and are based on the classic seven wastes in the Toyota Production System.) 

To this list I would like to add Wishful thinking.

Wishful thinking makes you underestimate the challenges ahead. Wishful thinking makes you commit to plans which are impossible to follow. Wishful thinking makes you leave your desk much too late to get to that meeting room in time. 

Wishful thinking is a soothing feeling that replaces logical thinking.

It is wishful thinking that makes the team overcommit sprint after sprint. It is wishful thinking that sets release plans that can never be met.

Wishful thinking can even make you want to bend in onboard entertainment into a communications platform.

Of course, wishful thinking could be seen as the root cause of other types of waste, such as Extra features. But I believe wishful thinking is such a huge source of waste that it is a waste in its own right. A waste that we should try to eliminate!

Unfortunately, eliminating wishful thinking is harder than one would expect. Wishful thinking seems to be part of our culture and part of our beings.  But the next time you hear a colleague suggesting that you could just bend something into your product, please ask her if that is not wishful thinking. I will!