What waste still exists in your agile approach? And how toxic is it?
From the Scrum Guide: “Lean thinking reduces waste.”
From Cambridge Dictionary:
Reduce: “to become or to make something become smaller in size, amount, degree, importance, etc.”
I love that last part—reducing *importance*. Sometimes you can’t remove waste overnight, but you can make it less important, less frequent, or less intrusive. And that’s already progress.
And here’s a definition of waste:
“An unnecessary or wrong use of money, substances, time, energy, abilities, etc.”
“Unwanted matter or material of any type, especially what is left after useful substances or parts have been removed.”
In Lean, there are eight classic wastes, remembered as DOWNTIME, each with just one example how it could show up:
- Defects – Bugs that require costly rework.
- Overproduction – Features built before they’re needed (or wanted).
- Waiting – Idle time because of dependencies or missing information.
- Neglect of human talent – Not involving the right people in the right conversations.
- Transportation – Needless transfer of work or data between systems or teams.
- Inventory – Bloated Product Backlogs with hundreds of “someday/maybe” items.
- Motion – Constant context switching between tasks.
- Excess processing – Overpolishing before showing it to users.
LeSS.works adds a few more wastes that hit Scrum teams hard:
Overburdened workers, bottlenecks, handoffs, wishful thinking, and scattered information.
The point isn’t to memorize these—it’s to make them visible, and then do something about them.
Scrum is built to help you do exactly that. Some examples:
- Timeboxes force you to prioritize what matters now.
- Sprint Reviews reveal when you’re building things nobody values.
- Retrospectives highlight bottlenecks, handoffs, and wasted talent.
- The Definition of Done prevents partially finished work from rotting in a corner.
So… is it transparent which waste still exists in your product, processes, tools, and interactions?
And more importantly: what are you doing to reduce it—today?
Waste doesn’t magically disappear. It hides in your “that’s how we’ve always done it” processes. It drains energy, morale, and focus.
The first step is to see it. The second is to make it smaller. The third is to eliminate it.
Your turn: What’s the biggest waste in your current approach? And what’s one step you can take to make it less important—or make it vanish entirely?
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!
I hope you find value in these short articles and if you are looking for more clarifications, feel free to make contact.
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Wishing you an inspiring read and a wonderful journey.
Scrum on!
