I have extended the Toyota stuff in my own special way...
1) Imagine every piece of data in your code is a component, a physical widget.
2) Imagine that component has mass proportional to its size as measured in 1's and 0's.
3) Imagine you have to have some person or some robot move it from place to place, maybe via a warehouse (hard disk somewhere).
4) Now question what you are doing and whether it is efficient.
Take the simple but common scenario of working with someone that knows Dropbox but not how to use FTP, e.g. a graphic designer. They upload their stuff to Dropbox, taking hours to do because they are on the slow end of an ADSL connection. They then send you the Dropbox link for you to then download and upload to the server for them. Now imagine all of those 1's and 0's have physical mass and have to move physical distances back and fore across the Atlantic.
This whole process is so not 'just in time' manufacturing ways of doing things.
Clearly this also goes on in your own code as well as with inane procedures needed to work with non-techies. Sometimes thinking data has physical mass helps you see whether what you are doing is efficient.
Comments
I have extended the Toyota stuff in my own special way...
1) Imagine every piece of data in your code is a component, a physical widget.
2) Imagine that component has mass proportional to its size as measured in 1's and 0's.
3) Imagine you have to have some person or some robot move it from place to place, maybe via a warehouse (hard disk somewhere).
4) Now question what you are doing and whether it is efficient.
Take the simple but common scenario of working with someone that knows Dropbox but not how to use FTP, e.g. a graphic designer. They upload their stuff to Dropbox, taking hours to do because they are on the slow end of an ADSL connection. They then send you the Dropbox link for you to then download and upload to the server for them. Now imagine all of those 1's and 0's have physical mass and have to move physical distances back and fore across the Atlantic.
This whole process is so not 'just in time' manufacturing ways of doing things.
Clearly this also goes on in your own code as well as with inane procedures needed to work with non-techies. Sometimes thinking data has physical mass helps you see whether what you are doing is efficient.