Making Work Visible: Expose Time Theft

Does unplanned work compete with your planned work? Do conflicting priorities turn your day upside down? Invisible work blindsides people, leaving teams unaware of mutually critical information, until it's too late.

Intertwined with these problems, is the question, how does one plan for, or allocate capacity for the invisible? It's tough to analyze something you can't see. Incognito work doesn't show up in metrics. Hidden work stalls and blocks important priorities and masks dependencies. Risk accumulates from work started late and delivered late.

The solution is to make work visible in a compelling way that allows others to see problems. In this session, Dominica provides countermeasures to expose time theft due to unplanned work, conflicting priorities, and dependencies, allowing them to be seen and measured. Come discover how you can become the voice of reason in your organization by exposing time thieves.

Transcript

1. ddegrandis.com @dominicad Making Work Visible: Exposing Time Theft to Optimize Workflow Dominica DeGrandis Director, Digital Transformation
2. ddegrandis.com @dominicad 3 THINGS CUSTOMERS GRUMBLE ABOUT • Things takes too long • The progress of work is invisible • Key info lost during handoffs
3. ddegrandis.com @dominicad “Things take too long” is a universal problem work request How many get work intake requests via email? Disconnects in communication interferes with collaboration & delays delivery
4. ddegrandis.com @dominicad WHAT’S THE POINT? “Things take too long” is a universal problem. Time matters. A lot. Expose time theft with Flow metrics.
5. ddegrandis.com @dominicad @dominicad Why do we think we can finish things faster than we do?
6. ddegrandis.com @dominicad Sometimes burnout cultures play a role, but …. Many of the reasons why we’re overwhelmed starts with our own doing.
7. ddegrandis.com @dominicad The Honey Do List?
8. ddegrandis.com @dominicad #1 - I don’t want to let the team down.
9. ddegrandis.com @dominicad #2 I’d rather start a shiny new thing than toil in something unglamorous. optimize for fun
10. ddegrandis.com @dominicad #3 I Didn’t realize how big the request was.
11. ddegrandis.com @dominicad It’s hard to say “no,” to the boss or to people we like. Who feels okay to refuse a manager’s request? #4 The boss asked me.
12. ddegrandis.com @dominicad How do you prioritize your work? Why do you take on more work than you have capacity to do? Go to www.menti.com and use code: 40 06 80
13. ddegrandis.com @dominicad Dominica DeGrandis The 5Thieves of Time Unplanned work Conflicting Priorities Unknown Dependencies Neglected work Too Much WIP
14. ddegrandis.com @dominicad Dominica DeGrandis Thief Too much Work-in-progress (WIP) THIEF TOO MUCH Work-in-Progress (WIP) Too much WIP comes from too much Yes
15. ddegrandis.com @dominicad WIP is a leading indicator At 100% capacity you have minimal throughput High WIP means that other items sit waiting for service longer. The single most important factor that affects queue size is capacity utilization.
16. ddegrandis.com @dominicad Dominica DeGrandis Thief Too much Work-in-progress (WIP) Queuing Theory allows us to quantify the relationship between wait times and capacity utilization. Wait times increase exponentially as utilization approaches 100%. Queuing Theory: Applied statistics that studies waiting lines If the goal is speed, consider managing work by queues. http://reinertsenassociates.com/books/
17. ddegrandis.com @dominicad Dominica DeGrandis Thief Conflicting Priorities Projects and tasks that compete with each other. Conflicting Priorities is a time thief b/c people take on too much WIP when priorities are unclear. Expose all the WIP • Visualize WIP • WIP limit as enabling constraint • Primary factor of speed is the amount of WIP
18. ddegrandis.com @dominicad “The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say “no” to almost everything.” ~Warren Buffett https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/756.Warren_Buffett
19. ddegrandis.com @dominicad Think twice before saying yes
20. ddegrandis.com @dominicad Flow Load – a measure to balance demand & capacity Flow Load: All the partially completed work. All the work-in- progress (WIP) in the value stream
21. ddegrandis.com @dominicad Dominica DeGrandis Unplanned Work: Interruptions that prevent you from finishing something or from stopping at a better breaking point. Unplanned Work is a time thief b/c unplanned work usurps planned work THIEF UNKNOWN DEPENDENCIES Teams rarely work in isolation. The larger the org, the more teams, the higher probability of unknown dependencies. The hardest thing we do is communicate across teams.
22. ddegrandis.com @dominicad Why Dependencies Matter • 8 ways to have three inputs • 1 in 8 chance of on time delivery • Every dependency doubles your chance of being delayed • Dependencies are asymmetrical in their impact. • 4 dependencies = 16 possible outcomes People aren’t available when needed
23. ddegrandis.com @dominicad Synchronize Coordination across teams. Make dependencies visible
24. ddegrandis.com @dominicad Remove Dependencies when possible The more teams, the higher probability of more dependencies. Loosely coupled components
25. ddegrandis.com @dominicad “The more we scale, the more we need specialized people. The growing division of labor in IT results in the specialization” ~ Mik Kersten
26. ddegrandis.com @dominicad Dominica DeGrandis Unplanned Work: Interruptions that prevent you from finishing something or from stopping at a better breaking point. Unplanned Work is a time thief b/c unplanned work usurps planned work THIEF UNPLANNED WORK
27. ddegrandis.com @dominicad Dominica DeGrandis Thief Unplanned Work Why Unplanned Work matters Unplanned Work: • Delays planned work • Steals your predictability integrate performance tests into delivery pipeline
28. ddegrandis.com @dominicad Dominica DeGrandis Thief Conflicting Priorities Projects and tasks that compete with each other. Conflicting Priorities is a time thief b/c people take on too much WIP when priorities are unclear. Expose Unplanned Work • Born in doing • Resistance to logging unplanned work
29. ddegrandis.com @dominicad Look at Flow time date Unplanned work delays Planned work Flow Time – a measure of speed
30. ddegrandis.com @dominicad Look at Flow time date Flow Velocity – a measure of productivity Question: Does Flow Velocity improve with faster Flow Time?
31. ddegrandis.com @dominicad THIEF CONFLICTING PRIORITIES A decision to do one thing is a decision to delay something else.
32. ddegrandis.com @dominicad @dominicad https://itrevolution.com/book/the-cornerstone-for-winning/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qav1y7G15JQ People have a finite amount of capacity Why Conflicting Priorities matter
33. ddegrandis.com @dominicad Explicit Prioritization Policies help teams be more predictable § PNW rainy weather causes unpredictable Landslides § Limited number of rails - freight trains have higher priority
34. ddegrandis.com @dominicad To get leadership buy-in, a prioritization & decision-making framework is useful ROI: Return of investment Cost of investment CoD: Missed revenue (gen, rev protection) costs (staffing, operational) WSJF: Delay cost Duration FIFO: First In First Out HiPPO: Highest Paid Persons Opinion wsjf - http://reinertsenassociates.com/books/ if work is same size, do work w/ high CoD If work is same Cod, do short work 1st if size & CoD are diff, base priority on delay cost divided by duration measure of impact of time on desired outcomes
35. ddegrandis.com @dominicad How do you prioritize your work? How do you prioritize your work? Go to www.menti.com and use code: 40 06 80
36. ddegrandis.com @dominicad Dominica DeGrandis Thief Conflicting Priorities Projects and tasks that compete with each other. Conflicting Priorities is a time thief b/c people take on too much WIP when priorities are unclear. Expose Competing work items • Visualize priority indicators • identify top 5 things • Not everything needs a fixed due date
37. ddegrandis.com @dominicad Dominica DeGrandis Thief Neglected Work Neglected Work is partially completed work that gets postponed. It’s work that sits idle on the bench waiting for attention. Neglected work is a time thief b/c it either gets in the way of higher value work or it delays the delivery of important work. THIEF NEGLECTED WORK
38. ddegrandis.com @dominicad Dominica DeGrandis Thief Neglected Work Neglected Work is partially completed work that gets postponed. It’s work that sits idle on the bench waiting for attention. Neglected work is a time thief b/c it either gets in the way of higher value work or it delays the delivery of important work. Why Neglected Work Matters
39. ddegrandis.com @dominicad Make tradeoffs clear – set strategic direction Flow Distribution – Work-item type allocation
40. ddegrandis.com @dominicad Flow Distribution allocation example (3) (1) (5) (5) WIP limit
41. ddegrandis.com @dominicad 5 Flow Metrics - focused on business outcomes • Flow Time – a measure of speed • Flow Velocity – a measure of throughput/productivity • Flow Efficiency – work vs. wait ratio • Flow Load – amount of Work-in-Progress (WIP) • Flow Distribution – work-item type allocation https://go.tasktop.com/Flow_Metrics_Webinar.html
42. ddegrandis.com @dominicad What we measure impacts people because people value what is measured.
43. ddegrandis.com @dominicad • Make Work Visible • Expose Time Thieves • Experiment & Measure Outcomes TAKEAWAYS
44. ddegrandis.com @dominicad Email: dominica@SendYourSlides.com Subject: flow To receive: • copy of this presentation deck • excerpts of Making Work Visible • Tasktop video on JIRA/SN tool integration • Forrester article: Agile-Plus-DevOps With Value Stream Management • IT Rev paper: Overcoming inefficiencies in work mgmt. systems