> The “manufacturing phase” of software is super thin, even for most basic crud apps, because every application is different, and creating copies is practically free.
This is not true from a manager's perspective (indoctrinated by Taylorism). From a manager's perspective, development is manufacturing, and underlying business process is the blueprint.
I don't know about that: I'm a manager, I'm aware of Taylorism (and isn't that guy discredited by sensible people anyway?), and I don't think the factory view holds up. Manufacturing is about making the same thing (or very similar things) over and over and over again at scale. That almost couldn't be further from software development: every project is different, every requirement is different, the effort in every new release goes into a different area of the software. Just because, after it's gone through the CD pipeline the output is 98% the same is irrelevant, because all the software development effort for that release went into the 2%.
This is not true from a manager's perspective (indoctrinated by Taylorism). From a manager's perspective, development is manufacturing, and underlying business process is the blueprint.