Under Non-Value-Added Work: > Here are a few things that we do that are waste... > Teasing apart code to understand how it works, especially when this effort

Under Non-Value-Added Work: > Here are a few things that we do that are waste... > Teasing apart code to understand how it works, especially when this effort is repeated whenever a team member confronts that code I can't think of a circumstance where close inspection of the code is not a necessary step toward understanding it. The author does not seem to indicate that he means rewriting, but even if he does, there is typically value in that exercise in the form of greater understanding, continuous improvement, elegance of design, and re-readability of the code. > Creating development infrastructure, tools, or automation that is only readily-understood by people who have had extensive experience with them The reality of this matter is that running custom software, especially cloud software, is tightly bound to infrastructure and operations, and there are no absolute standards. There are popular tools--make, Maven, Jenkins, etc.--but they serve to implement a very specific process. Even on a full lifecycle stack like JavaEE that has specific parameters for deployment and management, it's really not the whole story. I'd rather have a development infrastructure that I can rely on and risk it being a bit opaque than not have any.