Lean Software Engineering

It’s never been easier to generate high-quality code quickly. Most delay, waste, and fragility in software development persists because end-to-end delivery systems are burdened with unnecessary steps, complex infrastructure, and needless ceremony. Lean Software Engineering: Fix the system, not the code introduces an AI-aware systems thinking approach adapted for the modern software development lifecycle, targeting the bottlenecks where high-value improvements live.

In the late 1990s, the “Lean” philosophy migrated from industrial manufacturing to software development with the promise of maximizing business value while continuously eliminating process waste. Many Lean-inspired delivery systems emphasize automated testing, iterative review, and other code-centric approaches to software quality. In this book, author Leigh Griffin demonstrates how Lean thinking can shape quality, operational cost, and long-term maintainability in a workflow that includes coding agents and other modern tools. Instantly-familiar concrete examples ground each concept, including pull request reviews, debugging scenarios, and CI/CD workflows that mirror real-world engineering practice.