Overview

Jidoka is a software development methodology that aims to increase the automation and quality of a software project through the use of models and pipelines.

By following Jidoka, organisations can continuously modernise their software systems at scale while avoiding many of the problems associated with legacy systems.

Our hypothesis is that Jidoka is well-suited for large scale modernisation projects where the benefits of automation are most acutely felt. Some of these benefits include:

• Consistent architecture with low technical debt
• High test coverage including UAT's
• Lower organisational change with coarse grained milestones
• Decreased costs over the entire project lifecycle
• Up-to-date user and developer documentation
• Decreased knowledge loss and turnover
• Increased cross-team collaboration
• Healthier team culture and momentum
• Increasing ROI for modernisation portfolios

History

The software development industry has taken much inspiration from lean manufacturing. It is worth knowing as Agile, Scrum, Kanban, DevOps, and others have roots in this history. For example, TPS is a well-known implementation in lean manufacturing.

The Toyota Production System (TPS) was established based on ... "jidoka" (which can be loosely translated as "automation with a human touch") ... human engineers meticulously build each new line component by hand to exacting standards, then, through incremental kaizen (continuous improvement), steadily simplify its operations. Read more about Toyota Production System"

While there has been many different interpretations of lean manufacturing into software development methodologies, our interpretation focuses on brining human and machine skills together to produce a result that neither could reach alone (read more on centaur chess teams).

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