When discussing DevOps the Agile principles of Muri, Mura and Muda are key to help identify areas where improvements can be made.
Muri
Muri is overbudening. Overburdening a system, such as running an engine at its at limits can produces results for a while but it eventually causes burnout. Unlike Mura (below), Muri generally occurs when surprise or unplanned situations occur (like emergencies) and contingencies, such as disaster recovery plans, should be in place to limit Muri.
Mura
Mura is inconsistency, irregularity or lack of uniformity in work. For example a resource having zero task for three weeks and then four weeks worth of tasks for the fourth week. It may average out as 4 weeks of tasks over a 4 week period but it’s actually a demand surge of 4 weeks of work for a one week period. This indicates that work may need to be planned, scheduled or broken down differently to deliver it’s uniformity more smoothly.
Muda
Muda is waste such as activities that don’t add value, and waste should be removed. Examples of waste include:
- Waiting / Idle Time
Indicates too much capacity OR a dependency on tasks earlier in the chain - Over Processing / Over Producing
‘Perfection is the enemy of good’. Spending time over planning, producing goods or features that are not needed at this stage. Developing more than what is needed. - Underutilising Skills / Unused Expertise
Expert professionals working on tasks that should be automated or are mundane for their pay grade. - Defects
Defective products or code hitting production. - Transportation / Motion
Unnecessary movement, like moving code between repositories when not needed, or physical inventory from one area to another or travel time when tasks could be completed at home rather than in an office.