Your Family, Agile, and You: WIP limit

Showing posts with label WIP limit. Show all posts

September 08, 2012

Fast writing your blog using kanban – Part #2

Last week I showed you how my example blogger friend manages his blogging and life using Kanban.

So lets dig a little deeper :

How do you do this yourself based on last week example?

Step 1: Understand Your Goals

Why are you writing your blog? For fun? To put your thoughts down on virtual paper? To gain a reputation as the best carpenter in the neighbourhood?

The reason isn’t important. What is important is that you know what the reason is.

Our blogger from last week uses the blog as a means to an end. He wants to enhance his professional reputation, and get invited to lecture on his subject.

Step 2: What Do You Need?

To succeed in reaching your goals, you need to perform certain actions. For example:

1. We need to publish a post once or even twice a week.

2. We need to find time to write and post to the blog without losing our day job.

3. What happens when you go on a three week vacation? Does someone else update your blog?

4. Do we need to factor in peer review times?

5. We need to track our reading rates and statistics.

6. We need to distribute the blog posts through online channels.

7. We want to be able to answer reader questions and post requests.

8. We want to add more blogs in the future.

BTW :brainstorming can be an amazing tool to understand our need.

Starting off using Kanban to manage your flow may be hard at the beginning, but in few weeks you’ll get the hang of it.

Step 3: Based on your needs , go and Visualize your flow.

This is a crucial step. Visibility is a powerful aid to getting things done. Remember, the flow we build in the beginning can change - in fact, it HAS to change, as our needs change or our view of our actual performance changes. When we think ‘effective and ongoing improvement’, we change things.

So put on your blogger hat, and Map the steps you do when writing and publishing a post. Once you’ve put down this basic flow, ask yourself what you’ve forgotten. Go over all the steps.

But - Don’t forget to keep it simple!

Elaborate your flow..

This flow shows the step by step path a blogger takes from a concept to a finalised blog post.

So where do we visualize the flow ? Set a Task Flow board.

Usually I would recommend a white board and some sticky notes . This time. I’d like to show you the flow using a software tool. As we have to write documents and move ideas , pics and documents around, it’s so much easier to use software.

Each post will be a card moving on this board columns according to its actual state.

Prioritize your posts.

Start working and move posts around the board.

http://swift-kanban.com

look at your flow and ask yourself does it mach your needs? does it fit your vision ?

Step 4 : Limit work in progress (The work you began and didn't finish yet) :

It means , understand your limits, and follow them.

When we acceded the number of tasks/ work we can handle , we end out doing nothing valuable. in fact , we end investing more effort then expected. We need to Focus on the important & Challenges . This way, instead of dealing with things that aren’t getting done, we focus on what’s really important, and have time to learn new skills.

Keep in mind, that in some steps of your work you want to limit yourself from getting overloaded or with mach more tasks that you can handle. Limiting yourself prevents you from overloading, and getting stuck with a lot of unfinished writing that cannot be published.

First, Work in small chunks. It means , you don’t have to have an idea and then elaborate it fully to 3000 words and all in one time.

As our blogger did, work on small slices of time every day. Take small chunks of time and invest them in small flow steps every day. After all, you also want to be with your family, and you’ve got your job to think about. Doing some research for half an hour every night is a good start.

In fact, the flow reflects this need to work in small chunks. We have a chunk for ideas, then a chunk to elaborate on them, then a chunk to review, and so on.

Backlog

Don’t limit the backlog. Got an idea? Stick it here.

Ready

This one is a bit tricky. The limit is for the minimum, not the maximum number of ready posts. It’s best not to count on having just one post ready to go. Make sure you have enough posts ready to keep the flow moving. So having 3 posts ready at any given time, is the policy for this column.

Review

For our blogger the maximum number of posts ready for review is two They can’t do anymore.

Published

Once a week. This limit is a time constraint. You can change it, but you don’t want to inundate your audience.

Distributed

Two days after publication. This is a policy and limitation we need to keep in our blogger world.

Follow

This column starts day after the publication and is followed for a week . We need to know that we track each post, so that we can improve on them in the future.

Step 5: Make process policies explicit:

Set up your rules and guidelines of your work Understand your needs and make sure to follow the rules. the policies will define when and why a ticket is move from one column to another. write them down .Change the rules when reality changes.

For example,

Make sure to prepare your peer for the next blog and priority.

What is the best time to write your post? During the weekend? The evening? When is the best time to review it?

Step 6: Improve:

Moving forward from task to task without looking into your performance will bring little or no improvement. We want to avoid doing the same mistakes over and over again. We want to be efficient. For example, if you find yourself correcting post after post, after they are reviewed, ask yourself how can you do it better. Maybe you’re just using the wrong file format. So change your formatting from now on.

Improving is a key. Take a look at your performance. Are you satisfied with the results? Try to improve and change accordingly. don't be afraid to change , try and learn from the change (PDCA). We may need to change our flow or policies, our audience or reviewers. What brings better results? This is a process done all the time.

Measure, monitor and manage your flow:

Our blogger wants to have a size of that’s that he can handle throe the process steps easily. Measure your ability to write – 600-1600 words in a week. Is it small enough? Or should your posts be smaller. Can the average reader read 3,000 words? Isn't it too big? Do we need to change the flow as a result?

Can you keep on posting a blog once a week as you need to? If not, what is holding you back? What are the relevant changes in the flow you want to add so you will be able to keep publishing a post every once a week?

We can measure the cycle time of writing a blog. That means, from when you start elaborating an idea (a) to the time it is distributed (b).

Now, is the cycle important? The answer is probably yes. Lets say that you are approached by an author, who wants you to review his book. Knowing the length of your cycle means that you can give an estimation as to how long the post will take. Will it be published in two weeks? Four?

The main principle is - Improve. Know your field and improve. How many visitors come and read your blog? What type of blog brought the most visitors? Does your flow as it is have an impact over this data?

**The tool chosen for this presentation is swift Kanban, it has a free interface easy to use and professionally fit to our blogging needs.

July 07, 2012

Be like God - Kanban your way into the world

Whether you believe in God or not, the story of Genesis is an excellent example of doing one thing at a time.

As you probably know, God created our world in just seven days (vacation included)- by completing one major deliverable every day, which was made up of smaller, manageable tasks.

If you want more details, here ’s the original.

Of course, things are never that simple. On the third day, God completed not one, but TWO tasks. Why? Wait for the end of the post to find out :)

So what do I mean by saying that God does Kanban and God has a limited WIP? I actually mean, that God avoids multi tasking and getting things done by controlling the load of its tasks.

Well, WIP, as you know, is Work In Progress. In Agile, it refers to all materials and partly finished products that are at various stages of the production process.

Comparing it to an industry production line: In Genesis, God put his materials in one end, ran it through the production line, and got the magnificent outcome on the other end - Our world.

Don’t take me literally,obviously, but just look at the pattern here. Each day, God selected one deliverable with a related value, and each deliverable was composed of few small tasks, each done one at a time. At the end of each day (deliverable) God took one step back, looked at the creation (demo), and took up where he left off the next day.

This is an excellent example that shows you about WIP limitations. Doing one thing at a time, and challenging yourself to achieve more according to your limits. Obviously, God doesn’t have a limit. But perhaps he was trying to teach us to do one thing at a time, by example.

Control your WIP (work in progress): It’s simple. When we do more than we can handle, we probably won’t complete anything. Starting a lot of tasks at once, doing a little bit of everything, means that you finish late, or not at all. This also means that we have to understand what we are capable of, the size and issues we can grasp in one time.

Start finishing and finish starting.

Doing just a little bit from everything means you don’t do anything.

An easy example of limiting your WIP is having to attend two meetings at the same time. That’s easy. You pick one - and go to it. But what about preparing a presentation, writing a blog post, checking your email, preparing for a meeting with your team, and researching stuff for your manager. If you start all that at the same time, you won’t get any of it done, and you’ll end up missing your presentation, not answering all your emails, and meeting your team unprepared.

Now think about your kid. You’re telling him to clean his room, do his homework, feed the dog, clear the table, brush his teeth, take out the trash.... that could confuse even God :)

So how do we handle it then? How can we create our own small world, in such we can do valuable things and deliver the outcome?

Start off by making it clear (to yourself as well) that you are expected to do ‘one thing at a time’.

Then, order your tasks by schedule, priority or importance.

Make sure to start doing things with value first.

So lets take the previous example. You need to prepare a presentation next week? Start today by creating the presentation outline (‘Small task’) and send it along to get early feedback. Treating the ‘prepare presentation’ task as one big one means that your definition of done means that you have to finish the presentation today. This will affect your ability to complete your other tasks, so make sure you start and finish the scope of work as you defined it. Don’t leave unfinished tasks around.

Pick one task, complete it , and then take the next task in line. In time, you’ll see how many tasks you can perform at the same time, but to start off with, it’s better to complete one task at a time, than start five, and not complete any of them.

In industrial factories, an incomplete cycle of work is called inventory. Factories can’t sell inventory. Inventory takes up space, which you pay for. Inventory needs to be maintained, which you pay for. Inventory is waste.

In our personal life, we pay for that wasted inventory with delays, stress and overtime, just because we try to keep up with too many tasks.

Context switching (jumping from one task to another without completing either) is another way to get little or no value from our tasks.

A nice story a friend just told me the other day about a typical Kanban situation at home illustrates another example of the same problem:

“It was Friday noon, and we were preparing for our daughter birthday party. I was with my hands in the pizza dough, and my wife said: I can’t really help you, so I’ll bake a cake for us to eat during the week. In theory, there’s no problem. But when I needed the blender, it was dirty with chocolate and I had to wash it. When I wanted to use the oven, I had to wait 40 minutes for the cake to be done.

I should have told her to just relax and drink some coffee, or put some music and chat with me, instead!”

The value = daughter birthday party ➔ pizza : was not achieved

The resources= help from others with the blender, oven. : was not available

Over doing =using the oven as a resource to bake a cake while at the same time the pizza (which holds more value) needs the same resource.

Following the concept of ‘doing one thing at a time ‘ will be made easier when you visualize your tasks on a task board. The task board will help you see your tasks, prioritize them, understand your limits and challenge yourself toward improvement.

So… doing one thing time, it’s easier when , We understands that :

When we do more than we can handle, we probably won’t complete anything.
Context switching (jumping from one task to another without completing either) is another way to get little or no value from our tasks.
Doing just a little bit from everything means you don’t do anything.
Start finishing and finish starting.

So the actions applies will be:

1. Visualize your tasks. Use a task board.

2. Set priority to the things you need to do (see important vs urgent)

3. Pull one task, complete it , and then pull the next task in line. make sure you start and finish the scope of work as you defined it. Don’t leave unfinished tasks around.

4. Divide big assignments into smaller ones that have value (see how God took two small tasks on Tuesday?)

5. Understand your resources and limits demanding to perform the tasks.

6. Stick to doing what has the most value – even if it means not doing something else.

7. Look back at your results. Retrospect and change if necessary

8. Learn and adapt to your abilities. Once in a while, challenge yourself to take more tasks (although not in parallel!), just as God did on Tuesday.

Enjoy ☺

November 28, 2011

Are we overloading our kids with tasks? And if so, what can we do about it?

The answer is simple. Focus!

If you want to get your kids to perform their chores, one of the most important factors is focus. This is one of the keys to your success. The task board is an excellent solution for scope and focus our attention over the most important tasks and getting them done.

Sometimes we get to the point where our kids feel like they have too much to do. This might even be because of us, the parents. Not because we give them a lot to do, but because sometimes even a few simple (to us) tasks seem huge to our kids. Sometimes we forget that they aren’t really small adults at all, but children. Children who aren’t very experienced at setting goals or priorities.

I find that parents come home and immediately start with a list - “take out the garbage, pick your coat up from the floor, why is your plate here, and why is your room in such a mess?”...

Even I can get stressed out from a list like that, and kids take it even worse.

Homework is also a task that can cause stress - what seems simple to us, like four pages in English and two in Maths can create a feeling of pressure to get the tasks done. Ask him to empty the dishwasher as well, and you’ll find that it’s too much for them to handle.

If we succeed in changing the way they perceive their tasks, then we will be able to change the feelings that follow hearing about these tasks as well. So for example, there are tasks that we can head off the pressure before they start - for example, what do I do when I come back from school? Put the coat and bag in the room, eat lunch, clear the table and tidy up the big stuff in my room. Other tasks we will split up into smaller tasks - for example “Maths” would be the header, with “Page 1”, “Page 2”, etc. will be the tasks.

So how does the task board help us here? It’s simple!

One of the Agile principles of managing the work flow is first to be able to visualize it.

So our first step will be to do exactly that.

Draw three columns ( to being with) on a white board. Our flow will be to have tasks that we need to do, those in progress, and those we have done.

Put the tasks on the board, and you can visualize where you are today.

See? Simple!

In the following example. Adam has tons of tasks to complete, AND he’s expected to do his homework. No wonder he is stressed. This stress will probably cause him to drop everything, and try to avoid doing any of his tasks at all.

One of the main advantages of the task board is, that it makes our chore bottlenecks visible.

Now we can place the tasks in the right order, and we can see if we are overwhelming anybody with their task load.

The second, and not less important principle is to limit our Work In Progress, or WIP.

This means that you can only have so many tasks that are in the ‘Doing /In-progress’ column at the same time.

Sometimes limiting the tasks that are overloading our WIPs is the best way to get things done. Starting from doing one thing at a time (Yes, we can set more sophisticated WIP flows, but you are dealing with kids and basic principles, so keep it as simple as possible).

Limiting our WIP load doesn’t mean you should stop doing things. It just means that you need to control what you are doing at the same time, in parallel, and limit it to what we are really able to handle. As all tasks are now visible on the board, we will make sure to do one thing at a time. Adding more and more chores to the ‘Doing’ column won’t help if you child is already bogged down with tasks, and starting more and more new tasks without finishing old ones only leads to delays and frustrations.

Keep in mind that we are at home with our kids - not at work with our team or employees. This means that our ability to control the load is much more simple:

1. Decide what important.

2. Decide what comes first (priority).

3. Divide tasks up into small chunks if possible.

4. How long will it take?

5. Work on one task at a time.

6. Pull tasks from the “To-Do“ column only when your completed the previous one.

So if you told your child to do lots of things at once, now you have a different method. Visualize everything you want them to do, give each task the right importance and priority, pull tasks only when you are done doing the last task, and you’ll feel how the sense of being under pressure is lifted.

Take the first example we gave, what the kid needs to do when he comes home from school. There are a few solutions for the problem, such as:

1. Planning in advance the ongoing and repeating tasks, and placing them on the board.

2. Limiting, prioritizing and timing those tasks to the right time and place.

This way, instead of dropping all the tasks on the kids at the same time, when the kids get home they can see the task board and know what they need to get done. The child then selects one task after another, moving them into the ‘Done’ column when they are complete.

Let’s take the example of homework:

Let's teach the child to divide into smaller tasks. Then visualize those tasks on the board, and decide together on right time to perform those tasks.

So, to focus means:

1. Visualize your flow

○ Identify our list of tasks /chores.

○ Identify the crowded areas or bottlenecks.

2. Limit our load, or actions to reduce the load:

○ Plan tasks and chores that we know need to be done at a specific time in advance.

○ Decide priority, timing and importance...

○ Divide to small chunks.

○ Stop working on other tasks, and focus on moving bottleneck tasks forward.

○ Do one thing at a time at our own pace.

○ Pull - Only start a new task when we complete the previous one

Sometimes we can put a WIP limit over our 'In Progress/ tasks, but this is something for another blog :)

The Agile Kids book

Want to learn more about Kanban?

http ://en .wikipedia .org /wiki /Kanban _(development )

Kanban for project management

http ://www .atlanticcanadabusinessblog .com /

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