Time To Completion

expand to completion

Parkinson’s law is:

“Work expands to as to fill the time available for its completion.”

And people misconstrue it all the time.Logic plays funny tricks on our brains sometime. People somehow believe that Parkinson’s Law warns us that work will expand (or contract) to fill the time to the deadline.  So if I give you a project that will take you two weeks to do, and give you an eight week deadline, you will not complete it for eight weeks.That might be true. But it is also true that if I give you eight weeks’ work and a two-week deadline, you will complete it in two weeks.You’ll just do a really crappy job.The eight week deadline, on the other hand, gives me the option of prioritizing other work first until I need to get to your project.So, the problem here is not the gaseous nature of work – it’s that deadlines themselves are a major element for prioritization.In other words, work is a game and a major goal of the game is to get work done on-time.Sounds good.But … what if there was a different kind of game of work? What if the game of work was to continuously improve the quality and rate of delivery of your work? The game becomes ways to discover how you can work most effectively, most innovatively. The game stops being how close to an arbitrary deadline can you complete something.Then some interesting things happen.First, work becomes more predictable. You learn the rate at which you truly complete tasks. You can schedule better, promise better. You can complete better.Second, the creation of value becomes more realistically defined. Before, we considered the elements of work to be whatever was included in the contract we were satisfying. When we focus on quality, we find that tasks like making our workspace comfortable, our tools up-to-date, and our minds rested and ready-to-think are of equal weight. We find that rushing toward deadlines decreases quality and taking a few 5 minute breaks throughout the day increases quality. We find that while we can rush work out, that work tends to come back. We start to question if meeting a deadline and having revision requests come back was ever meeting the deadline to begin with.Third, you learn the real goal of estimating is to promise completion you can deliver with quality. Sometimes that takes longer, sometimes it does not. But the goal is quality, not speed.Fourth, communication with others increases. We quickly learn that working alone is working in peril. Our projects benefit from regular communication with our partners and clients. The more constant the collaboration, the more likely there will be success.Deadlines will always be a reality. We will never escape them. The goal here is not deny the existence or advocate for the abolishment of deadlines. What we want is to remove the stress and focus on the date and transfer that to the work itself. So if something is due on the 31st of December and we get it on the 1st of November, it’s finished when it is finished (November 15th) and does not wait until the deadline.So what Parkinson’s Law is really saying is that when you give people a deadline, that’s what they focus on. The game becomes the deadline. S

Why I’m Excited About Lean Camp

LEAN_Camp-WebBanner

JUST LET ME LEARN!Hallway conversations are almost always what people peg as their favorite parts of conferences. Yet conferences rarely provide ample space and time for people to have these conversations. When we actually converse with our peers or with the speakers, we learn more and, more importantly, we retain more. We are actively engaged in the learning, rather than just being spoken to.When Jeremy Lightsmith and I sat down to plan a conference, we didn't spend any time on the format at all. We both knew we wanted conversation, learning, and community over talking heads, big names, and locations. The Open Space model was a logical fit for the Lean Camp we wanted to create.I am very excited about Seattle Lean Camp because it embodies some central ideas.

1. The Future of Work – In the last several years, science has uncovered some startling new truths about how we learn, how we collaborate, how we are motivated, and why we work. Through the intersection of Lean techniques, neurophysiology, and social economics, we are learning that humans respond better to respect than remuneration. Additionally, changes in the way we communicate and the cost of information storage and dissemination has had profound impacts on the workplace. As the workplace becomes more social and more humane, it also is becoming more innovative and less reliant on traditional top-down management.

2. Learning and Creation – Lean Camp is about value creation from the outset. While many attendees have been headliners at other conferences, at Lean Camp they are there to share their wisdom and learn from others – just like everyone else. The potential topics at Lean Camp are as varied as the participants. At Lean Camp we want to find new solutions to old problems in a dynamic, charged environment.

3. Cross-pollination - Conferences that are for one industry and attended by only people in that industry miss the opportunity to really learn from others. At Lean Camp, we already have attendees representing software design, government, manufacturing, medicine, academia, graphic design, engineering, and more.

4. Gender Balance – I have been pleasantly surprised to see something very near gender parity in the people signing up for Lean Camp. After years of putting on conferences in both software development and engineering, this is certainly a first for me. I'm looking forward to asking attendees what drew them to Lean Camp to find out why we are enjoying such remarkable attendance

5. The Fallacy of Work / Life Balance – Work life balance is more than personal and it is more than a choice. Whether we are employers or employees, we need to recognize and respect that “work” is part of life, not some opposing force we balance with life. Studies already show that companies with a strongly collaborative corporate culture have weathered the current economic downturn better. Pre-Lean Camp conversations have drawn focus on this fallacy and toward respect in the workplace.

6. Low Inventory – W. Edwards Deming warned us of keeping inventory in our companies decades ago. Inventory are those things that we create, believing they are value, but then need to maintain and mange those things. For manufacturing, inventory might be the parts you need to make your product, or the products themselves. We want to make just enough and at the right time. For a conference, inventory takes the shape of expensive speakers, venues, large elaborate dinners, and many sponsors with special needs. In creating Lean Camp, we've specifically kept our inventory low. Even though everyone who comes to Lean Camp will receive a free T-Shirt and free food from two of Seattle's premier gourmet food trucks, and will enjoy spending time at the University of Washington's beautiful Center for Urban Horticulture, Lean Camp is only $50.

7. Great Food – Those who know me, know when I’m around food can’t be far away. This year at Lean Camp we have two of Seattle’s premiere gourmet food trucks providing free lunches to all attendees. On Saturday we have Where Ya At Matt? with his awesome Cajun selection. On Sunday we have Pai’s with his highly acclaimed Hawai’ian and Thai works of art.

8. Clothing – Nordstrom’s Innovation Lab is making sure that everyone who attends also leaves warmer and happier with a beautiful Seattle Lean Camp T-Shirt.

9. Value Cascade – So what we have here is a beautiful setting, smart people, an open format in which to think, great food, and a stylin’ t-shirt. All for $50.

This year in Long Beach, California, the LSSC put on a conference that explored Lean and kanban in software development. We had a wonderful turnout and fantastic conversations that resulted. With Lean Camp, we are hoping to take those conversations and combine them with creative minds from other industries. We want to explore the personal, the teams, the governmental, and the corporate views of these emerging ideas.I am excited about Lean Camp's potential to unlock new ways of thinking about work, about life, and about the future. More than anything, I’m excited to see what community grows from this. We’ve built a strong community of practice for kanban and lean with Seattle Lean Coffee – what comes next?Thank you for all who have signed up thus far and looking forward to seeing the rest of you there as well.  (And I’m looking forward to the food ….)

WIP: The Kidzban Book

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My dad was magical.

When I was growing up, he turned everything into a game - studying, yard work, even combatting my fear of the Wicked Witch of the West. "Life should be fun!" he'd insist, invoking his own father's optimism, a dictum in broken Italian dialect I struggle to remember but have long since forgotten. I can't say if it was by way of nature or nurture, but there’s no doubt the DeMaria men believed in enjoying life. When situations that were decidedly unpleasant presented themselves, they simply viewed them as opportunities to get creative.And creative they got.Whether it was setting the seemingly interminable list of prepositions I had to learn by rote to the tune of Pop! Goes the Weasel (

About, above, across, after, against, among, ar-rou-uuund!

), or sending me into the science class I struggled with carrying a Tupperware container filled with a freshly butchered calf's brain (can I still distinguish between the cerebellum and the medulla oblongata? you betcha!), my father believed life was too short not to make even difficult tasks enjoyable.And then came the bane of my existence: Mr. Pittman's history class. I despised it, and the 10 pound textbook that I'm still convinced was written to combat chronic insomnia. All those foreign names to pronounce! All those dates to remember!

Boooor-ring

was my justification for coming perilously close to failing an exam. But my father assured me, "they're just stories," after which he proceeded to re-create tales from Greek mythology casting all my friends as characters. Thousands of "stories" and two history degrees later, I couldn't agree with him more. Life - even the tedious parts - should be fun. With a little creativity in fact, they can be fun

and

educational.That's why I had to write this post. And why Kidzban is so important to me.

For the past year and a half, Jim and I have heard from countless people - some from as far away as South Africa and Japan - all excited to share inspiring accounts of how they use Personal Kanban (and a little creativity) to inspire their children. Among the most common uses for “Kidzban” (as we’ve affectionately come to call it) involves visualizing and tracking progress as it relates to household chores, family projects, homework and exam prep, extracurricular activities, religious pursuits, and even confidence building initiatives.

Lately however, another group of Kidzban practitioners is emerging. Increasingly we’re hearing from teachers and home educators who are using it with great success in and beyond the “traditional” classroom. In an attempt to maximize student performance - and make learning fun - they are utilizing Kidzban to establish course goals, visualize homeschool curriculum workflow, track progress (relative to the student’s personal best as well as to that of their peers), identify strengths and weakness, and implement and monitor solutions.We look forward to sharing many of their stories with you in the upcoming publication from Modus Cooperandi Press

Kidzban

, the follow-up to our recently released

Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life.

So why all the enthusiasm about some sticky notes on a whiteboard, you ask?Personal Kanban creates a narrative of  “work” comprehensible to people of all ages and learning styles. Work ceases to be a collection of unrelated tasks and instead becomes a series of events that impact each other and flow from one to the next. With just a glance, users see the things they do well, identify areas that cause them to struggle, and gauge the distance from their goal. In the context of Personal Kanban - or Kidzban, in this case - struggle is not construed of as a failure but rather, as an opportunity for improvement. As a visual radiator, Personal Kanban lets the user know their success simply requires an alternate path. When that happens, they can look for root causes and then going forward, they can adjust their actions to suit.Personal Kanban transforms our “work” into a system. It takes even the most tedious tasks and turns them into a game that’s appropriate for all ages.Consistent among the stories we’ve heard is how children become excited about taking on even the most unpopular or even boring tasks, like picking up their toys or writing the letter “G” until they perfect it or making sure Fido has enough kibble in his bowl.Not only is this "game" a simple one, but it’s an evolutionary one, too. Because Personal Kanban reflects our ever-changing context, it creates a game with an ever changing board. It’s a game we can improve upon, so boredom is kept at bay.Children “beating” their siblings (and even their parents) by completing the most chores becomes commonplace. Students “compete” not only with their classmates but with themselves, finishing their lessons quicker and with less error. In both cases we’ve discovered that upon task completion, kids often seek additional tasks, incentivized by the satisfaction they get from moving yet another sticky note into the “Done” column.Games can assume myriad forms, from head-to-head battles, to problem solving, to role-play. Depending on the circumstance, kids can find themselves besting their brothers and sisters in individual performance, or they can team up - “swarm” on a problem to solve it quickly and effectively. Parents and educators alike are using visualization to build creative games aimed at specific outcomes and to reward specific behaviors.In the end, the games themselves become an education.Whether it entails chores or schoolwork, being able to visualize and focus on the task at hand as part of a system - with immediate and ultimate goals - allows kids to see their action’s trade-offs while learning the best way to exercise their options. They take responsibility for their action (as well as their inaction), and feel pride in a job well done, establishing their independence and buttressing their self-esteem.Kidzban curtails arguments, energizes families, and leaves kids empowered.As a visual radiator, the board offers reinforcement for their efforts. Every member of the family can see that they’ve been effective, that they contribute value. When one person gets hung up, they know where help is needed.So tell us - how are YOU innovating with Kidzban? Are you interested in sharing your experiences or visualizations, or just want to hear more from other practitioners? Whether you’re a parent or educator or even a kid, we invite you to become part of the emerging Kidzban community of practice.On Facebook:“Like” the Personal Kanban page on Facebook to meet and engage with others interested in Kidzban.On Twitter:Whether you have questions, ideas, or experiences you want to share, be sure to add the hashtag #kidzban to your Tweet to ensure other members of the Kidzban community can join in on the conversation.In the interim, be sure to check out some of our favorite Kidzban practitioners:For an innovative approach to chores, see Janice’s

One Kid'z Kanban Board

For ways to use Kidzban throughout the home, see Maritza’s

Becoming and Agile Family

For incorporating Kidzban in the classroom, see Patty’s

Not Out of Reach

And last but certainly not least...Recently I had the extreme pleasure of stumbling upon the most delightful yet profoundly insightful videologs from two of Kidzban’s most perceptive practitioners: siblings Jillian and JoHanna - ages 8 and 11 respectively who, later with the help of 3 year old Joy - are Kidzban rockstars (and agilistas in the making). Don’t miss their dad Joseph’s

Saturday Chores with Kanban

series, part I and part II.

Saturday Chores with Kanban, Part I

Saturday Chores with Kanban, Part II

And it's just a hunch, but judging by the fun these young ladies are having helping out with the housework, I'm fairly certain they feel their dad is magical, too.

Image by Sprezzatura.

There is No “We” in Bowling

...except for maybe Wii Bowling.

“We have a team of 24 customer service professionals.”That was how it started, innocently enough. This “team” had heart, heroes, and a whole lotta backlog it needed to work through. So they established what would seem to be the most logical metric: number of individual tickets processed per day, per person. People would then be able to compare their numbers; laggards would be identified, heroes could be lauded. This, they felt, would spur support staff to process more tickets and ultimately, shrink the backlog.To their dismay a month later, their backlog was larger. A second month went by and its growth showed no sign of slowing down. Epic Fail.So what happened? The “team” was indeed raising its rate of production.They were working harder, much harder in fact. Everything was working according to plan. But things were getting worse.They were functioning as a team. But what kind of team were they functioning as?Teams tend to fall into one of two categories: they are either structured like a bowling team, or a football team. In this case, the team’s structure resembled a bowling team.On a bowling team, individuals combine their scores to create a composite. The team members approach the line one-at-a-time and aim for a strike. If one bowler gets a strike, it in no way impacts his teammates’ individual scores. On a bowling team, other than camaraderie, there is no combined effort; there is no bonus for playing well together.With a football team, 11 players convene on a field, and from that point on can achieve absolutely nothing alone. Either they perform as a coordinated unit, or they get annihilated. The same is true for all football - rugby, soccer, whatever.Does winning require a competent coach? To some extent, yes. But even the best coach is limited by the capability of his athletes and their ability to work as a team. Each player is optimized not only to their position, but also to the situation. They read the field, they make changes on-the-fly, they optimize for effectiveness at that precise moment.The team we were working with was a bowling team on a football field.And man were they getting hammered.Part of the problem with the bowling team approach is that individuals optimize for themselves and assume that in the end, the group will benefit. This team needed a re-orientation. Cumbersome and overburdened, they relied extensively on “heroes,” putting flexibility and long-term effectiveness at risk. So we put into place some game-changers. Taking into account complexity theory, we recomposed the unwieldy, 24 person team into four smaller, interdisciplinary teams to optimize the department’s capabilities and help focus the teams’ resources. We introduced a visual control  - a kanban - to give team members transparency into what their colleagues were working on and where their strengths lie. We set up daily stand-ups to encourage and reward knowledge sharing/cross-training, collaboration, and continuous improvement. And when those kaizen moments occurred, we ensured those improvements were implemented immediately.Most important, was that we re-invisioned the backlog: no longer was it a pile of distinct tasks for the individual to process and remove serially but instead was now a large, coherent team target of which we began to ask a series of questions:

• Are there tasks that are no longer relevant?

• Are there tasks that can be consolidated?

• Are there tasks being ignored due to personality issues?

• Are there tasks stalled waiting for internal expertise?

By viewing the backlog from various perspectives, the newly-formed smaller teams could combine their talents and solve problems quicker. True teamwork not only increased the rate at which tickets were processed, it helped focus on the right tickets to process: work was quickly directed to the team member(s) most capable of handling that specific work type. Information dissemination and cross-training became a by-product of day-to-day teamwork.The result: their backlog shrunk approximately 50%.Examine your teams. Ask yourself if they are more akin to a bowling team or a football team. When problems arise, do they focus on their tasks, or do they swarm to find a resolution to the team’s most pressing problem? Is the team structure inhibiting their situational awareness?What can you do to make a situation more collaborative?