Flow, Cadence, Slack, and Stress: Lean Muppets Post 7

Scooter Reduces Cycle Time to Rowlf’s Breaking Point

Here we find Rowlf singing Coleman and Fields’ “It’s Not Where You Start, It’s Where You Finish.” He sings at a comfortable rate and all is well. Scooter then tells him he needs to do it again, but this time a little faster. So Rowlf turns on the juice, hits more of a ragtime vibe, and blasts through the song, completing with a bit of stress, but still can add a flourish or two on the piano. Scooter then pokes his head in and tells him to do it again in 20 seconds. Rowlf then shifts into high gear, his ears flapping, his head bouncing, and words coming out fast enough to rival hardcore 80s punk. At the end of the third, he's done his work in such a short amount of time, he must close the piano all together and simply concentrate on breathing.In our work, we have lean concepts of flow, cadence, and slack. In our book, Personal Kanban, we describe them like this:

• Flow: The natural progress of work

• Cadence: The predictable and regular elements of work

• Slack: The gaps between work that make flow possible and define cadence

Flow is a little deeper than this, because the concept of “flow” differs slightly for psychologists or lean practitioners. Both concepts, however, are important for knowledge workers and managers.For psychologists, “flow” is a state of mind where we feel in the zone. This is where everything is moving at the right pace, we have clarity and comfort with our actions, and we have a sense of peace with the process under which we are working.In lean, “flow” is more the rate at which work progresses. You have a value stream and work flows along it. Flow is hindered by bottlenecks, constraints, policies, or other ne’er-do-wells.Cadence helps us set flow. It’s like the beat. It’s the rhythm of our work. The right cadence can move tasks from start to completion at just the right rate to maximize completion and quality.Slack is sort of the space between beats. You can’t have a drum solo without silence.All three of these work together to create a natural system of work not unlike music. So we see it in Rowlf.The first round of the song he is fine, even the request for a faster variation is welcome. He can complete his task and is ready for more.The second round of the song, he makes little jokes like, “how’m I doing?!” He’s going faster than he’s comfortable with, his pace is not sustainable, but he can still complete the work. (This unsustainable fast pace is where many companies try to keep their knowledge workers).The third round is where some misguided managers like to live every day. Rowlf is asked to do the song at the very limits of his capability: in 30 seconds. Scooter, the project manager, isn’t even listening to the song, he’s just counting the seconds to on-time completion. Rowlf does bring the project in on-time but, again, he completely collapses after it is done.Between the first and third rounds, Rowlf endures a great deal of stress. When flow, cadence, and slack are in agreement, product delivery is flawless and nearly effortless. The more they are not in agreement, the more effort is needed and the more stressful the work is.At his initial pace, Rowlf could probably play all day, every day. At the second pace, maybe he could play for an hour. At the third however, he'd barely make it through one playing.And as we can see below, even adrenaline junkies like Animal are not immune.

Maybe Buddy Rich is Immune

This is the seventh in a series of Lean Muppet Posts: For a list of Lean Muppet posts and an explanation of why we did this... look here -> Lean Muppets Introduction

Depth in Progress: of Wine Snobs, Audiophiles, and Agilistas

“Wine is to enjoy, not to judge.”~ Hwi Woong Jeong (웅가) Wine Enthusiast

hwi

The gentleman next to me took out his laptop and began typing, he had a large pile of wine labels and a notebook filled with wine notes. He began systematically copying them into his laptop. I figured he was a wine critic.Other work he went on to do involved software development and airplanes so my curiosity overtook me and we began to talk. It turned out that he was a software developer that worked with airplanes. But … he was also a noted wine critic enthusiast. He had been to the Pacific Northwest of the US on a wine excursion as a guest of the major wineries. He had been all over Washington and Oregon tasting.When I was in my 20s, I decided I wanted to be a wine snob. So I went and took courses on wines, read books, and started a collection. I became rather good at it. So good, in fact, that I found I wasn’t actually enjoying wine any more. I was always critiquing it. I could always find something not quite right.I told him this and he smiled and said, “wine is to enjoy, not to judge.”We will always suffer from snobbery – to this day, I cannot listen to music from laptop speakers. And I know more than my share of agile adherents who actively hate every team they come into contact with because of their flaws.We tend to fall in love with our ideas and nothing kills romance like familiarity. Richard Dawkins once said, “There is an anaesthetic of familiarity, a sedative of ordinariness which dulls the senses and hides the wonder of existence.”We do this all the time with our work. We get excited about a task or an idea and we go deep. Too deep. Beneath the layer of effort that separates excitement from boredom. From energizing to draining. From inspiration to drudgery.We might call this “depth in progress”. Just like we can have too much work in progress, we can also have too much depth. It’s simply doing too much of something. We go beyond what would be an acceptable level of completion and strive for “perfection.”

“The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.” ~Ben Okri

At some point on the path to perfection, we pass the point of diminishing returns. After that point, our efforts do not return profit, only waste. In our pursuit of perfection, we identify all the things that cannot be perfect and then strive to perfect them. Yet, the imperfect is always with us. It is where growth resides.Yet the need for growth, and the imperfection, will always be there. We end up in a doom loop of reductio-ab-absurdum – we manage our products as if the end product were a fine diamond that would last centuries. Well, it took the planet millions of years to make that diamond, and we don’t have that kind of time.Therefore we need to approach our work by asking, “What is the least amount I can do to make this task successful?” In doing this, we want to move our ticket to DONE and have it stay there. No re-work, no additional tasks created because it was incomplete.Can that task be improved in the future? Absolutely. But for now, it is complete. We launch it, watch it work, and come back to improve upon it later if necessary.We want to know what the minimal completed task looks like and then do that. Anything beyond is too much work. Our previous goal of “perfect” is still valid, but now it has an upper boundary. Overly polishing the task does no one any good. Because of this, perfection is no longer gilding the lily - we now recognize the lily is perfect. We want to enjoy our wine, not judge it.

"To gild refined gold, to paint the lily ... is wasteful and ridiculous excess." ~ Shakespeare

Mozart’s Record Store: Personal Kanban Anti-Pattern 2: Only One Value Stream

 I will not be accused of burying the lead here and say right up front:

Your Value Stream Is Wrong

Normal PK Board

And it always will be.This is a good thing, as we work from day to day the steps we take to complete work subtly or even violently change. When we move from home to work to a special project, there are subtle and important differences to how we do what we do.Today’s anti-pattern is is painful to watch. When people fall into a certain way of visualizing their work or a certain value stream, it becomes comfortable to them. So comfortable, in fact, that they are reluctant or downright resistant to change or improve it. They then flounder in increasing painful work because their value stream doesn’t match their actual needs.Let’s say for example that Mozart is the manager of a record store in Bavaria.  He has three main types of work over a given month. One is order new stock from a variety of suppliers. The second is make sure the books are in order. The third is … everything else.Everything else is actually easy - even though it may be rather chaotic at times. We visual this type of work with a standard Personal Kanban value stream of READY | DOING | DONE. The work is going to be varied and extremely task-focused. Each of Mozart’s tasks is its own element of value. The best way to manage this work, to weigh these options, and to get these tasks completed is in a model that accepts the complexities and inherent chaos of day-to-day work.However, in other more project centered types of work, he may get more from value streams geared toward tracking of that specific work or project.For example, when ordering stock, the ideal world would tell you that orders are placed and received each month at set times. Mozart’s store has a mix of goods provide through suppliers ranging from large vendors to one person in their basement. Order responses are highly varied, leaving Mozart having to track not only the rate at which inventory is sold, but also the average response times for ordering popular items.So here we see Mozart’s order processing kanban. The value stream is quite specific to the value created. This is repeating value created in a fairly predictable way. If Mozart was only using the READY | DOING | DONE value stream for this type of project, he would have dozens of tasks polluting the rest of his work. The stages in these value streams may not actually be tasks. So, say he finds it’s time to order a new set of Buddha Machines - so he contacts the people in China via email. When he does that he can move the Buddha Machine ticket to ORDER.  A few days later, they might send him a letter saying, “We received your order and will get to it soon.” Mozart can then move the ticket to CONFIRMED - even though he really didn’t do any task himself. The point here is that there is new useful information about the state of the Buddha Machine order. A few days later, he gets an e-mail saying that the Buddha Machines have shipped. Mozart again can move the ticket.From time to time, new tasks may appear in Mozart’s regular Personal Kanban that say things like “Order new AxMxAx album”. At that point, when Mozart does do the ordering, he will move that ticket to done, but also start a new ticket in the order processing kanban.So, here we see that Mozart’s work can have more than one value stream.Now, let’s say this works for Mozart for a while, but he begins to notice that even after he receives confirmation many orders are not shipped.  Tickets start to back up at the “ordered” stage but don’t progress beyond. Mozart can then come up with ways to fix that problem. For example, he could insert a “remind vendor” column that he can move tickets to if they aren’t shipped in less than a week.Mozart must change his value streams to meet his needs. So must we all.

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

The Diffusion of Responsibility

Personal Kanban and Diffusion of Responsibility

When I was an urban planning student at Michigan State University, I was part of a team involved in a large group project. We were writing a downtown redevelopment plan for Albion, a small city in southern Michigan which, like the rest of the state, had fallen onto hard times. We needed to come up with ways for the town to get back on its feet.There were about 8 of us on this team, and while we were a fairly responsible group of kids, we knew that other classes, outside jobs, and our social lives would present us with competing responsibilities and very different schedules. Fortunately for us, the project had only one deliverable - a paper that was due at the end of the term. Being urban planners, we’d all had a few psychology courses, and we knew all about Kitty Genovese, and so we wanted to avoid something called diffusion of responsibility.Diffusion of responsibility is a negative outcome in groups where responsibility isn't clearly assigned nor is leadership taken. In other words, it's a situation where roles are poorly defined. Its ugliest and most infamous example is the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese. Returning to her Queens apartment late one evening, the 28 year old was brutally attacked in front of her home by a man who shoved a knife into her back - twice. In earshot of her neighbors, her cries for help brought residents from the surrounding apartments to their windows, their shouts scaring off her assailant.Temporarily. Newspapers reported that upwards of 38 neighbors heard Kitty’s screams or witnessed her attack that Spring night. While some did call the police, no one ran to Kitty’s aid. Instead, they all assumed someone else would go to help her. Sadly, no one actually did.Minutes after he fled, Kitty’s assailant returned. Following the trail of blood she left leading to her apartment’s foyer, he stabbed the young woman to death.It was no one’s explicit responsibility to help the victim, therefore no one came to her aid.This horrific scenario encompasses two forms of diffusion: social loafing and the bystander effect, elements we likewise wanted to avoid in our work group. We didn’t want parts of the project to be dropped or ignored because no one had taken responsibility for them. So we met during school hours as well as afterwards, regularly taking the group’s pulse. Most tasks were assigned to more than one person, and most were due the next time we had class. We did not assign a leader but instead, equally divided responsibility amongst group members so no one could control the group or lazily benefit from the hard work of others.Diffusion of responsibility takes other forms as well. It is part of herding mentalities like mob mentality or group think. In these situations, people end up taking part in actions that they would never sanction on their own. In the military and in business, it can also lead to people’s blind obedience, simply because they lack the positional power to object to direct orders. (Just consider the Nuremberg Trials and the events leading up to the collapse of Enron.) This is sometimes called superior orders.In teams, when we use a visual control like a kanban or a screen with well-chosen metrics, we actively thwart diffusion of responsibility. Social loafing is exposed immediately for what it is and usually dealt with not by reprimand, but simply by conscience: when it’s obvious to everyone that you are loafing, you’re compelled to stop. If you don’t, it’s pretty easy to dismiss you.The presence of visual controls make herding mentality less likely because the context of work and the opportunities for meaningful dialogue are heightened. This increase in dialogue also lessens the likelihood of falling prey to superior orders.In all these instances, diffusion of responsibility results when people have either incomplete information or lack the ability to act on the information they have. When using Personal Kanban, our goal is to give ourselves and others the maximum amount of information available that can aid in better decision making. We are less likely to loaf, follow the pack, or fall prey to blind obedience when the impacts of our actions are directly presented to us and our colleagues.Image “An Apparently Homeless Young Woman Sits Crying in a Doorway, Ignored by the World” by Arty Smokeshttp://www.flickr.com/photos/artysmokes/2963629524/sizes/z/in/photostream/