Making Work Visible: Exposing Time Theft to Optimize Work & Flow

by Dominica Degrandis

It should come as no surprise that we can better manage what we can see. When we can’t see our work, our options are obscured.

Flow is the concept of focused motivation.

We like small teams because they can move fast. Just realize that by moving fast as an individual team, you may be paying the price of not moving very fast as a whole organization.

Code will be used in ways we cannot anticipate, in ways it was never designed for, and for longer than it was ever intended. —Joshua Corman

If I had to identify what kind of work is most neglected, it would be the work related to improving quality, including deferred maintenance, bugs, technical debt, and code without tests (legacy software, as defined by Michael Feathers).

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.

CIOs and VPs often don’t realize the disruption created when they ask for things outside of the standard process.

The hardest thing we do is communicate across teams. —Troy Magennis

It’s true, we like small teams because they can move fast. Just realize that by moving fast as an individual team, you’re less able to move fast at the organization level due to the high coordination impacts from having a large number of dependencies.

It may even help you to get leadership buy-in for organizing by product teams instead of by project teams—something to consider if your current organizational structure isn’t serving you very well.

Never let something important become urgent.

Multitasking is an effective way to get less done.

Have you ever worked for a company that has a 20% “creative” time policy? I’ve read that the main reason they do that is not for innovation (that’s just a bonus) but to keep capacity utilization at 80% rather than at 100%.4

The following three questions became the new agenda: What work is blocked? Notice the emphasis is on the work and not the person. Thief Unknown Dependencies often chimed in here with blockages due to database architecture issues. What work is at risk of becoming blocked? Here’s where Thief Conflicting Priorities typically showed up. Is there work being done that isn’t on the board? This question would then evolve to include queries about work that might currently be invisible to the team or problems that might have occurred during production the previous night. These questions often revealed the dirty work of Thief Unplanned Work.

Standups

Alignment (Coherence) of Technical and Business Teams

Gaining crystal clear understanding on why a company is in business in the first place can fundamentally transform the culture of an organization because leaders can go back to this to make priority decisions.