What is Continuous Improvement? — UK Software Development Guide
Direct Answer
Continuous improvement (also called Kaizen, from the Japanese) is the ongoing effort to improve products, services, and processes through incremental, regular improvements over time. In software development, continuous improvement is embedded in Scrum retrospectives (improving team process every sprint), DevOps culture (learning from incidents), and product development (incorporating user feedback into each iteration).
Continuous-improvement in the UK
Continuous improvement is both a software delivery practice and a UK regulatory requirement in certain sectors. GDS Service Standard Point 8 explicitly requires services to "iterate and improve frequently" — continuous improvement is mandated for government digital services. FCA operational resilience: post-incident reviews (improving from incidents) are a form of continuous improvement required by PS21/3. ClickMasters retrospectives surface process improvements every sprint and maintain a documented improvement log — useful evidence for GDS assessments and ISO 27001 audits.
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