Jidoka: automation with a human touch

Organisations often find themselves trapped in a costly cycle of replacing legacy systems. Jidoka is a software development methodology that aims to break this cycle and for organisations to mature into a mode of continuous modernisation. Jidoka, which loosely translates to automation with a human touch, offers several strategies for developers to modernise legacy systems onto their preferred technology stack, ensuring that quality, security, and other compliance is met. The paper presents state-of-practice information on how the process emerged through the use of Model-Driven Engineering (MDE), DevOps, and lessons learned using other software development methodologies across 100+ projects.