This fictional gangster is the best example of Daily Lean I know of

One of the best aspects of Lean / Agile is that it’s one of those things which can be exemplified in almost any part of daily life. 

How do you plan your vacation? How do you choose your lunch? How comfortable are you leaving the house with 20% battery on your phone? 

All these, and 1000 others, are decisions and actions we can look at from a Lean perspective. This can make it gimmicky, but it can also be a great teaching and reflection tool. 

But none of them has been so masterfully portrayed as the challenge of cleaning the blood from a car and disposing of a body before Bonnie is back from the night shift at the hospital at 9:40 AM. 

Good Enough: What is it? 

A lot of Lean revolves around “Good Enough”. Just in Time (JIT), and Just Enough, are about acting at the last possible moment, with the least amount of effort and disruption in order to fix the problem. 

Minimalism. Elegance. Don’t overdoit. Don’t overreact. Just do enough.

But what is enough?

Good enough is not 12, it’s 0, it’s not 42. It’s not a specific value on a specific scale. Good enough is contextual. 

You decide what is good enough for you, I decide what it is for me, but when we work in a team, we have to understand the same thing. 

Just like “common sense”, just like “normal”, “good enough” are words people use to refer to something they think it’s very clear, obvious even, when in fact is often not clear, and definitely not obvious. 

So you have to define what good enough is, and you have to communicate it, and repeat it, until everybody understands the same thing. 

And this is how Winston Wold defines what a “good enough” cleaning job is, in their circumstances: 

                         And I'm talkin' fast, fast, fast. You 
                         need to go in the backseat, scoop up 
                         all those little pieces of brain and 
                         skull. Get it out of there.  Wipe 
                         down the upholstery – now when it 
                         comes to upholstery, it don't need 
                         to be spic and span, you don't need 
                         to eat off it. Give it a good once 
                         over. What you need to take care of 
                         are the really messy parts. The pools 
                         of blood that have collected, you 
                         gotta soak that shit up.  But the 
                         windows are a different story.  Them 
                         you really clean. Get the Windex, do 
                         a good job.

You’re probably not in the body disposal business, but you can still learn about how to communicate your definition of Good Enough, your expectations, from Winston Wolf here. 

User Acceptance Criteria 

And one more thing. Tell me if this isn’t the best User Acceptance Criteria you’ve ever seen in a movie:

                         If a cop stops us and starts stickin' his big 
                         snout in the car, the subterfuge 
                         won't last. But at a glance, the car 
                         will appear to be normal.

If you’re the one doing the cleaning, you understand exactly what to do, you know what compromises to make and not to make, because you’ve been painted a clear picture of a real life scenario that your work has to pass. 

Go on, be like Mister Wolf :) 

I recommend the whole scene, and for that matter, the whole movie. Pulp Fiction, 1994.