I've noticed recently that many in the Lean community have moved their thinking beyond elimination of waste. The two hot topics are Genchi Gembutsu ('go to the source') and Set Based Design (on which more in another post.)

This idea of going to the actual scene and experience problems for real interests me - because we do it so seldom in software development (particularly product development.) But we have found a way of compensating, we use our imaginations. The techniques of Personas, Lifestyle Snapshots and Usage Scenarios, that we've included in MSF v4.0 were all developed to allow software people to use their imagination to envisage real people, doing real things with a product that doesn't yet exist. I believe that these imagination based techniques deliver more than an 80-20 payback, i.e. for 20% of the expense of "going to the scene" and observing what's actually happening, we can get 80% of the user experience results by using our imagination.

In any event, the idea of "going to the scene" does already exist in the literature of our industry. The concept of (the misnamed) ethnographic study has existed in usability engineering for 20 plus years. These are misnamed because they are really anthropological study of specific situations rather than ethnographic studies but somehow the wrong word stuck and is in wide usage in the literature.

So to those who are about touting that Genchi Gembutsu is the next big thing in Lean software development, I'd reply, it's not a new idea - we've had an equivalent idea for a very long time. However, it is not in wide usage because it is expensive and difficult to do. Instead we have developed an alternative utilizing our imagination and artistic flair. So I'd argue that we achieve the essence of Genchi Gembutsu in software through imaginative techniques like Personas and Usage Scenarios and not through physical appearance at the scene. [see related post, When Genchi Gembutsu goes Wrong].  Technorati tag: Agile, David+Anderson, Lean