In software engineering there have always been two schools of thought. One school feels that there is a lot to learn from manufacturing. The other school thinks that they are entirely different.

There have been 3 distinct phases in this debate:

1. CMM Phase: Manufacturing has transitioned from craftsmanship to mass production – productivity and quality has improved many-fold. Software development can also benefit from such transition. CMM movement was born from this thought.
2. Agile Phase: Manufacturing deals with machine, software development deals with people. Processes involving machines can be controlled precisely. People are inherently different and are not interchangeable. People communicate better face to face rather than through written documentation. From this realization agile movement was born.
3. Lean Phase: Toyota revolutionized manufacturing through lean manufacturing system and dramatically improved quality and optimized cost. The core of lean manufacturing is empowered teams. Since agile movement also is based on self-organizing teams it must be possible to transplant the learning from lean manufacturing to software development. This lead to lean software development.

There is an apparent logic in all three reasoning. So, which advice should you follow? Are they compatible with each other? Before answering these questions you should look at the differences between manufacturing and software development.

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