I just read an interesting article (by Freddy Balle & Michael Balle) describing Lean and previous production methods.

Heres the punch line:

Ultimately, to compete, all companies will have to adopt lean principles simply because it is currently the only know way to resolve a fundamental industrial conundrum.

(continuted ...)

As George Stalk phrased it, industrial cost goes down by about 15% to 25% per unit every time volume doubles, but goes up by 20% to 35% when variety doubles. At the moment, lean is the only proved way to increase variety and reduce development-to-market time while maintaining low costs and premium quality.

Software development is all about variety. It makes no sense to reimplement the exact same features again and again. There are always little adaptions.

**Lean is the only proved way to increase variety and reduce development-to-market time**

Applying Lean to software is a reasonable way out of the tar-pit.