Multitasking is merely the opportunity to screw up more than one thing at a time.
—Steve Uzzell

2.2

AMBUSH THE RINGLEADER

Back porch office, 8:35 a.m.

Deep into a metrics review focused on the evaluation of median cycle time, my eye perceives a tiny alert in the top right-hand corner of my screen. Before it flashes away, I see a blurb from Liz that asks, “Hey, do you have five minutes?” So, what do I do? I respond to Liz and say yes because I adore her. We do things for people we like—it’s one of the five reasons we take on more work than we have capacity to do. And with that short exchange, I’ve added more work to my already full day.

As mentioned in Part 1, understanding and being aware of these five reasons is golden. The first reason is pretty basic: as team players, we don’t want to let our tribe down, and as mentioned before, we get endorphins from saying yes. The second reason is fear of public humiliation or of getting fired. The third is that we do stuff for people we like. The fourth reason relates to the fact that people are optimistic creatures, which leads us to think we can finish tasks faster than we actually do. Of course, things almost always take longer than we think they will. And finally, the fifth reason is that start-ing something new and shiny is more fun than doing the grunt work it takes to finish something old and unglamorous.

All five reasons are a part of Thief Too Much WIP’s toolkit. As we have discussed previously, Thief Too Much WIP is the ringleader of all the other thieves. While it is bad enough on its own, Thief Too Much WIP infiltrates all the other time thieves and exacerbates the problems that are created by dependencies, unplanned work, conflicting priorities, and neglected work.

Let’s take a look at a quick refresher on WIP. Remember, too much WIP means that work arrives faster than you can complete it. It’s all the work you’ve started but not yet finished—all the partially completed work. Because Thief Too Much WIP scatters our atten-tion across multiple things, it steals our time, our money, and our ability to deliver high quality work. This results in others having to wait longer than they’d like to get what they want, and you losing money due to the delay. Thief Too Much WIP steals time away from getting things done sooner rather than later. And because we cram to finish, the result is not the beautiful, masterly crafted product we want.

You know you have too much WIP when:

• Context switching is common.
• New tasks are started before older tasks are finished. In other words, we say, “Yes, I’ll do that,” even though we haven’t finished a bunch of other stuff that is already on our plate.
• Work gets neglected and ages.

When you find yourself frequently context switching or when you get asked that five-word question, “Do you have five minutes?” and you say yes, you allow yourself to be yanked out of the flow zone and into the detour zone.

But there’s hope! Tracking WIP can help you avoid further distraction and prevent Thief Too Much WIP from stealing your evenings and weekends.

There are many ways to track WIP. The following example (Figure 10) helps expose WIP and starts by dividing WIP into three major categories based on who requested the work:

• Silver bullets are urgent requests to do something right away, usually initiated by someone in a leadership position. They are in a category of their own because of their urgent priority (perceived or otherwise).
• Business requests, including feature work, content, and design, are the things IT does that “the business” promotes, manages, tracks, and is heavily involved with.
• Teamwork is the stuff IT does that teams initiate, such as dealing with bugs, technical debt, security, platform upgrades, and maintenance.

Figure 10. Expose WIP

Again, this is just one way to categorize work; there are other ways that we’ll explore a bit later.

Breaking work down into categories helps people better visualize the flow of work, which in turn aids them in understanding the communication needs of their team and of people outside the team. Recognizing and addressing these needs within the team is relatively easy. Outside the team, this task is harder, usually because extra effort is required to ensure the right person gets the right information. And silver bullets probably require special communication with the boss, because it was likely the boss’s boss, if not the VP (or someone higher up the food chain), who made the initial silver bullet request. If not them, then someone they listen to and/or whose opinions they take seriously. (We do stuff for leadership to reduce fear of public humiliation or of getting canned.)

Horizontal swimlanes are sometimes added to kanban boards for extra visibility or as a way to set up WIP limits. Swimlanes are lanes dedicated for a particular kind of work to flow through. A common swimlane seen at the top of many boards is a lane for expedites (work items that have some urgency around them and need to be expedited).

WIP limits are often set at the top of the columns of a kanban board to keep the linear flow of work in check, but they don’t have to be. How you impose WIP limits is up to you and your team, those folks who are impacted by the work. There are several ways to set WIP limits. WIP limits per work item type, per swimlane, or per column are common options.

WIP limits per person are sometimes the first step folks new to kanban take in order to stem the bleeding of overburdened people. More advanced teams set WIP limits at team levels in order to optimize workflow at the bigger-picture level, instead of just the local level. This helps multiple teams to collaborate on team goals instead of focusing narrowly on individual goals.

Visuals like this help team members hold each other accountable with transparency. The WIP limits add tension to the system. People are compelled to innovate and resolve issues preventing them from finishing their work. WIP limits provoke necessary conversations. Some may start uncomfortably, but again, the tension from WIP limits inspires teams to get creative and prevail. WIP limits protect people from having to play catch up, and they impose rules that help you get stuff done. It’s the WIP limits that create the necessary tension in the system. They give permission for people to say, “No, I can’t take that on right now; my plate is full.” They are the constraint that enables the completion of work.

A simple three swimlane board (such as in Figure 10) gives each swimlane its own WIP limit.

Silver bullet requests tend to come directly from leadership. This swimlane is sometimes called the VP lane. CIOs and VPs often don’t realize the disruption created when they ask for things outside of the standard process. Bringing visibility to silver bullets helps show the cost associated with these requests. All work, including invisible WIP, has an associated cost, so make it visible! Silver bullets may well be worth the cost, so to these we say, “We know this is important, and we’ll do it, but you only get one of these at a time.” Limiting silver bullets to one at a time is just one example.

Teamwork in this visual consists of what I call revenue protection work; namely, fixing technical debt and security work.

Business requests are revenue-generating work. This swimlane is shaded pink in the figure because they’ve gone over the WIP limit of five, which prompts people to take a step back and ask, “What’s going on?” It’s helpful when others keep us honest. It’s a bit like being on a diet—it’s easier to avoid sugar when people are there to watch you order dessert every time you go out.

Remember, categorizing work by who requested it brings visibility to the communication involved—internal, external, or leadership.

Notice that the items in the feedback column in Figure 10 are not delivered yet and will now take longer to do. Flow requires clear and prompt feedback. Waiting on feedback from others is one of the biggest delays in workflow. The longer it takes to get feedback, the easier it is to forget details and the harder it is to be able to pick the work back up again. Like rotten fruit, knowledge decays faster than we’d like. Prompt feedback helps us negotiate challenging demands and adjust our tactics to maintain the flow state. It also encourages us to finish work already in progress before launching into shiny new work, no matter how much it glitters. Visualizing work through the lens of flow improves team communication and understanding.

Speaking of visualizing work, I am reminded of the visual language that occurs with kanban board designs. The “pictures” on the board (the board structure, card avatars, icons, and symbols) are easily received information. We need very little education to get the message. The writing on the board (the lane headers and on the cards) is perceived information. It can take some specialized knowledge to decode the abbreviated text and acronyms, but once they are known, a quick glance at the board returns volumes of information immediately. The combination of pictures and writing responds to our need for a nimble, unified language.

If you think about it, metered onramps are a combination of pictures and text. The traffic light is the picture, and the sign below it provides the text. A freeway onramp constrains traffic flow to allow for safer merging. The meter is only needed when there is high traffic. Have you ever tried to merge onto a freeway at rush hour when the metering lights aren’t working? Yikes.

If you want to be more predictable, limit WIP to the team’s capacity. What is the team’s capacity, you ask? Good question. Don’t let it be 90–100%. We’ll cover why in Part 3.

Keep in mind that it’s okay to start with a simple approach to limiting WIP. Taking small steps toward a goal is something Lean coaches counsel people to do all the time. You’ve got to start somewhere. Starting with a thin layer of something good is sometimes the only way to get started. Sometimes trying to make too big a change to your current process, such as implementing a strict set of WIP limits, could cause you to crash and burn. No one wants that to happen.

Limiting WIP also has the advantage of limiting interruptions. I have a tiny wood stove, which comes in handy when the power goes out. To conserve energy, I used to use it every day during the winter, regardless of the power being out or not. Unfortunately, the overhead for stoking and attending a small wood stove every thirty to forty-five minutes is high due to the interruption of work. But, if the fire lasted ninety to one hundred twenty minutes, I’d be fine with it because ninety to one hundred twenty minutes allows me time to concentrate long enough to make progress on complicated work.

When juggling five balls in the air, the amount of attention given to each ball is but a fraction of a second. There is an almost continuous need to switch your focus to the next ball. The same is true when handling five different work items. You can only give each one so much attention before you are interrupted by one of the other items. The more WIP, the more interruptions. It’s easier to juggle three balls than five balls, and in the business world, it’s easier to finish something and get it delivered and off your plate when there are fewer things to focus on.

EXERCISE

Explore the Five Reasons Why We Take on More WIP

PURPOSE: To acknowledge that many (if not most) people take on more work than they have the capacity for, to hear and empathize with team members on why it happens, and to discuss countermeasures (actions taken to counteract problems) for how to deal with this common phenomenon.

Time: 15 to 30 minutes

MATERIALS:

• One pen per person
• Several 3 x 3 inch sticky notes per person
• Stopwatch

INSTRUCTIONS: Participants begin by pairing off with their neighbors and asking each other this question: “Why do you take on more work than you have the capacity to do?”

Allow two to three minutes for the interviewee to respond, while the interviewer jots down one answer per sticky note. Then switch roles.

Once everyone is done, have a group discussion about the reasons people offered. Then, discuss ideas for how to deal with people’s desire to say yes when they don’t have enough capacity. Be sure to specifically explore what to do when the request comes from someone they like or from a boss.

Variation 1: Ask each person to write their own answers on sticky notes if networking is unnecessary, such as with a group of people who already know each other.

Variation 2: Ask the group to collectively group similar responses together and post them on a wall to bring visibility to the most common responses.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Thief Too Much WIP infiltrates all the other time thieves, upping their damage and making them all the more difficult to control.
• There are many ways to set WIP limits. WIP limits per column, per work-item type, or per swimlane are common options.
• WIP limits create the necessary tension in the system. They are the constraint that enables people to complete work.
• Invisible WIP has a cost, so make it visible!
• Categorizing work by who requested it is just one approach to visualizing work. It’s one that brings visibility to the communication involved—internal, external, or leadership.
• Visualizing work through the lens of flow improves team communication and understanding.
• The combination of pictures and writing meets our desire for a unified language. Use this combo to your advantage.