Thread by @RonJeffries

Apparently we need a little digression on waste. I'll leave it to you to study the 8 kinds of waste that lean addresses, and the Toyota notions of muda, muri, and mura. Maybe some links, below, if I remember.

I think about it a bit more intuitively than that.
/1

Presumably we're "in the business" of building something. Building a software product is at the top of my mind, but we could be writing a book or having a bake sale. The "something" is the software, the book, or the cookies.
/2

Everything we do to produce that produce is an "expense". It goes on the expense side of the ledger, if I understand how ledgers work, which is open to question. The money we get from our cookies goes on the revenue side.
/3

Roughly speaking, revenue good, expenses bad. We always want to reduce expenses, and we always want to increase revenue. Sometimes the two go hand in hand, sometimes not.
/4

If we sell the book on e.g. Leanpub, we can reduce our expenses in building it, and (possibly) increase revenue from getting a higher percentage. Expense reduction and revenue go together. Super.
/5

If we don't have a copy editor for our book, it may be full of typos and people will say it sucks and no one will buy it. We increase expenses by getting a copy editor, and increase revenue. Reduction of expenses and increase of revenue do not go together.
/6

But as soon as we have the copy editor, we have to accept in our minds that this expense is "bad". This money is "wasted". In principle it need not have been spent, if we'd only learn to spell and stuff.
/7

Everything on the expense side is waste. Some of it is necessary, some of it isn't. We often think that some expense is necessary when in fact it is not.
That's the point of the preceding screed on estimates: we often think they're necessary when they're not.
/8

In principle, we always "want" to reduce expenses to zero. Sometimes we can. Sometimes it's easy. Sometimes it's hard. Sometimes the effort to reduce the expense pays off. Sometimes it doesn't.
/9

But it is /always/ legitimate to try to reduce any expense. It may, however, not be productive. That's a different topic.

In principle, we would like to reduce all expenses to zero.
/10

In principle, we would like to simplify all estimates, make them easier to get, easier to use. In principle, we would like to eliminate them entirely, if we reasonably can.
/11

The point of the preceding screed is not that we can get rid of all estimates. It is that getting rid of all estimates is not a crazy thing to want. They are expense. They are waste.

So, if you'll think about it, maybe you'll see that there's a different, better question:
/12

"Given these estimates right here, and given that we know that they have impact on the expense side of the ledger, is there a way to avoid doing the estimates, with a acceptable impact on the revenue side of the ledger?"
/13

That's always a sensible question. Sometimes, the answer is "No, they're easy enough to get and doing no harm, let it be." Sometimes, it's "Yes, kill these estimates." Sometimes, it's "Let's explore a bit and then decide."

ISTM, it's never, ever, "That's a stupid question".
/end

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