pull
Also known as: pull system
A concept from Lean Manufacturing that states that things should only be produced once there is real demand for them. In a "pull system", upstream (i.e. subcomponent) assembly lines only produce enough product to refill items withdrawn from the pool that buffers them from the downstream assembly lines. In software development, this can be translated into "We should only write methods that have already been called by other software and only handle those cases that the other software actually needs." This avoids speculation and the writing of unnecessary software which is one of software development's key forms of inventory (which is considered waste in Lean Systems).
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