Learning: Why Limit Your WIP X

In “Creating an Economy” we discussed four elements we needed to understand to build our economy. The third was that knowledge work involves learning.Knowledge workers need to learn – they learn by doing, by observing, by experimenting, by reading, and by adjusting.Doing – We learn best by directly experiencing. If I have a four hour powerpoint presentation about how to play Super Mario Brothers, you will understand that my little pixelated guy can jump on things, that sometimes he’s big and sometimes he’s small, and that there are coins around. But you would learn much more simply playing the game. Knowledge workers learn a considerable amount just by starting and beginning to work on a project. Through doing we understand the coherence of our workObserving – There is much in the average project to observe. Some tasks are easy, others more difficult. Some things we are expecting to work well, do not. There are personal conflicts. Through interested observation, we become aware.Experimentation – In our doing and our observations we note discrepancies between the way things are and potential, more ideal, ways they could be. We build hypotheses about why these are. We experiment to see if our hypotheses are correct. If they are not, then we learn and try again. If they are, we learn, we are happy, and move on to the next thing to fix.Reading – Or watching a lecture. But when we are aware – we have a better idea of where the gaps in our knowledge are. We can engage in directed learning because we know, rather than just learn because of current management fads or because someone orders us to. In this case, reading or classes augment our observations and experiments.Adjusting – Learning is humbling. It makes us reassess our current processes and replace them with other ones. Sometimes learning comes with epiphanies. Sometimes adjustments are minor.

Limiting WIP and Learning: The Onset of Agency

Limiting WIP gives us the flow and coherence we’ve discussed throughout this series. It is not a panacea, but it is an extremely powerful tool. Consider is a pre-requisite more than a cure-all. If you, your team, or your company is not limiting work-in-progress, then they are likely distracted, overburdened, and unlikely to innovate.Limiting WIP is not going to instantly and magically create a magic workforce. Anyone making claims that any out-of-the-box process will instantly result in hyper-productivity is a snake oil salesman.What limiting WIP will do, however, is promote the growth of something called agency.When Eldred began to see himself setting policy by starting working groups, when he became comfortable with the thought of completion, he was gaining agency.The trick here was that none of the project managers could truly provide Eldred agency. They also didn’t have the authority. Only Markus Blume could truly give the people in the company the ability to act on their ideas. He had to set policies and expectations that would both support that decision making and not hinder it.Limiting work-in-progress was vital in this effort because overloaded people simply don’t have the understanding necessary to make thoughtful change. To be sure, overloaded people can come up with endless suggestions for change – but it’s unlikely to be thoughtful. It’s more likely to be reactive to their overload. This is post 10 in a 10 part series on Why Limit Your WIP. See the index for all 10.

Communication: Why Limit WIP IX

Team B

“Good morning, Eldred.”“Good morning, Markus.”Before Markus came on board, there was zero contact with the CEO. Maybe at the Christmas party. He was more like a movie star – someone you recognized but didn’t dare approach. Certainly not someone who would know your name.Markus, on the other hand, was a regular at stand-up meetings. He’d participate, but not dictate. It was like he was actually interested.For months now, Team B had been regularly releasing features for the product. Now, the team was suspiciously close to … delivering.Markus comes into Team B’s space and looks up at the kanban. He sees directly what’s in process, what’s done, and what is almost done.He says to Eldred, “That looks good!”There was no briefing. There was no status meeting. He can see that work is flowing. That two tasks are completed and three more are in acceptance testing. Soon they’ll be ready as well. No tickets are marked as blocked or as a problem.The team is within their WIP limits – 2 for design, 2 for development, 4 for acceptance.Eldred says with a smile, “If the box design is out of development today, the rest is easy. We have a working session on that today. I think we’ll knock it out.”After years of shoddy or no releases, they are releasing something after a matter of months – and that feels good.

Communication and Limiting WIP

The WIP limits for the team enable flow of work, they also limit the work being undertaken to a reasonable level. On Team B’s board, Marcus is able to quickly grasp what is going on – so can the members of Team B, so can members of Team A. Everyone can see the simple story that is this project.That instant information transfer from kanban means that no one on the team had to tell Markus their status. Since nothing is blocked or shows a status of pain, there is no need to talk about them in depth. Eldred mentioned one feature in particular, because it was relevant and he was excited about it.Time consuming communication can now be reserved for things people actually need to talk about.In addition, the board is always on. If something becomes blocked or in danger, the board communicates that too.Without limited WIP, the board’s conversation becomes much less compelling. We never know if people are overburdened. We will likely have an incomprehensible number of tickets on the board. Tickets will enter the board and languish for long periods of time. When questioned, people will say, “Yeah, I’m just not working on that right now” and will continue to say that as the board fills with the trivial and the catastrophic.The healthy constraint of limiting WIP creates a coherent message that is instantly communicated to all. This is post 9 in a 10 part series on Why Limit Your WIP.   Read post 10 Learning: Why Limit Your WIP X in the Why Limit Your WIP series.  Also, see the index for a list of all of them.

Awareness: Why Limit WIP VIII

Whether you call it Buddhism or another religion, self-discipline,that's important. Self-discipline with awareness of consequences. ~ Dalai Lama

below the water line

Self-discipline with the awareness of consequences.When we become self-aware, we shed learned helplessness. The inability to act is replaced by the polar opposite – a desire to act.We have seen the repeated with teams that previously had given up. A corporate culture of failure acceptance is created and is so pervasive that people say, “continuous improvement is impossible in my culture.”What we’ve seen, however, is quite different. People that have been in a low-trust, punitive environment where action is shunned do develop learned helpless and they do shut down, BUT … they create pent-up demand for change. They may have learned that they can’t help now, but they’re STILL THERE.So Eldred is still there, even though he was beaten down by years of five projects. Eldred is still there.For years, Eldred has had to keep only the self-discipline of not going insane being pulled in so many directions. The structure of the company limited his ability to have the self-discipline of good product development and completion. Eldred never had to be aware of consequences. Other than internal political ones, he was sheltered.Now, Eldred is a little scared. He recognizes that now Team B is on the hook for completing a product. A real product. To be really released to real buyers. And, not only that, he recognizes that Markus Blume isn’t going to tell him, or his project manager, what to do.Eldred is also aware that no one got laid off. There was so much work not being done that the staffing still seems insufficient even for just these two projects. How is that possible?Eldred is becoming aware.Eldred sees that he could suggest working groups to get out features faster. It might work. He’s always wanted to try it, but never could because even he couldn’t commit to it. It’s an experiment, but … it just might work.

Don’t Be the Costa Concord

When teams become aware, they tend to want to make decisions.Risk-averse people (management and workers alike) tend to fear this shift because it means that decisions are made by people not in authority. The issue here is that we’ve had this pendulum so well stuck at the other end of the spectrum that no one can make decisions at all.  Small, daily course corrections for projects and the company should not require edicts from the highest of authorities.The rule of thumb that we’ve used is something called the water line.If you are about to make a decision, ask yourself, is this fails does it poke a hole in our corporate ship above or below the water line?If it’s above – we just say, “ooops,” we patch it and we move on.If it’s below – we should have a conversation or set of conversations with those in command of the ship so they can either say, “Um, let’s not do that” or “Okay, let’s do it and we’ll prepare if something goes wrong.”And yes, that’s vague.In general, there are going to be three water-line zones.Obviously safe, obviously dangerous, and that annoying transition band in-between.As the work force is transitioning to becoming more fully aware of their actions and their potential consequences, you might have a transgression or two. However, we’ve never seen a ship sunk because of awareness.What is more likely is that ships no awareness end up like the Exxon Valdez.

Eldred’s Unexpected Bonus

Limiting WIP for Eldred and Team B has led to a keener understanding of their product. They have been able to focus, as they are each only working on a very few tasks at a time. Extremely limited context switching has raised the productivity of the group. Increased project coherence has made them much more effective (they know what they are building and why).Greater awareness is creating an efficient operation. They can see inefficiencies, they have more time to talk to customers, and they have a shared understanding for the product itself. This is post 8 in a 10 part series on Why Limit Your WIP.  Read post 9 Communication: Why Limit Your WIP IX in the Why Limit Your WIP series.  Also, see the index for a list of all of them.

Focus: Why Limit Your WIP VII

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. ~ Mark Twain

DerekKanban

Eldred comes into work on Monday. He is instantly besieged by requests for work, information, meetings, and product from all five of his teams. His co-workers, his bosses, his clients all need things from him now.Eldred cannot judge the relative importance of these requests. It’s possible, in fact, that they are all equally valuable. Therefore, there is no clear direction for him to take.Eldred calls his five bosses together and cries out, “Just tell me what to do!”

Eldred’s Got No Focus

Knowledge work happens within our brains. It is a product of the mind. Without imagination, without insight, without inspiration, it is simply work.Value creation includes the work creation for a reason. It’s not value reproduction. Or value copying. Knowledge workers create. They invent. The innovate.When we lose our ability to focus, we greatly impair our ability to do these things. We become reactive. We begin to ask bosses things like: “tell us what to do.”What’s worse, we believe that’s what we want.As a boss, if your employees or team members are asking that question – you know they have no focus.

Learned Helplessness

When people specifically ask someone else to tell them what to do, one thing is quite clear:

THEY DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO.

As the person who is directing knowledge workers, I have bad news for you.This is your fault, and you need to fix it.Eldred’s bosses all start to argue. They all have the highest need for Eldred right now. Things are behind and they, personally, cannot abide any more delays.Not only does this create an unnecessary meeting of people to argue about Eldred’s time – it also is a playhouse of something psychologists call “Learned Helplessness.”Learned helplessness comes from situations where we feel we are utterly powerless to act.An example of this for me comes from the 7th grade. We had an algebra teacher who was a tyrant. After I had the flu, I sat for an exam that I utterly bombed. When I went to him for help, he told me I should study harder. When I said that I had been sick, he told me that wasn’t his problem. I had nowhere to turn and my shame made me not approach my peers. Whenever I talked to the teacher, he let me know this was my problem. My lack of understanding of things at the beginning of the class led to me falling farther and farther behind, ultimately I failed the class – believing it was all due to my inability to learn algebra.I was convinced this was my substandard brain.My parents were concerned, but also were under the impression that this was just Jimmy “not applying himself.”But then they went over to Fred and Donna’s for dinner. They were eating with a group of parents of my friends. Someone mentioned their kid had failed algebra and they were disappointed. My parents said, “Really, us too!” Soon the whole table was filled with the parents of apparent algebra dunces. Coincidence?Root cause discovered, they went to the school and demanded to have us re-tested at the end of the summer.  The school, who apparently didn’t notice the flood of failing grades before, said, “Sure, whatever.”And the lot of us found ourselves getting algebra tutoring over the summer. … and oddly enjoying it.We all tested at the end of the summer, got our A’s and went on with our lives.But to this day, math upsets me. I still feel that learned helplessness and can’t shake it.

Why Eldred Can’t Read

Learned helplessness is insidious. Eldred and his bosses and his co-workers have been buried under a mountain of work. They can not see the mountain. They would not have the authority to react to the mountain even if they could.Lucy is not going to just sit up and say, “You know, this company has too much work. I’m going to kill my project and give my people to the other projects.” First, it’s her job on the line. Second, why her and not someone else? Third, she likely believes her project (as do the others) is the most important. Fourth, she simply lacks the authority to make that kind of determination. And fifth, she and the other project managers are not paid to sit around second guessing corporate decisions.Eldred is in an even worse situation. He cannot get away from any of his five projects. He knows they are all doomed. He is also quite convinced that nothing he can do will improve the situation – because he is also convinced of the necessity of all five projects and his role in them.Learned helplessness here means that rather than attack the root cause of the company’s problems (too many projects in flight) – the groups work on treating symptoms as if they are problems.We see Eldred and his colleagues exhibiting new traits: they appear anxious, less talkative, or depressed. They begin to say things like, “Just tell me what to do.” Managers often like this and will give them direct orders. The workers will then merely do their task – never ask for the context and never work to make things better.This means that tasks begin to more and more be done without an understanding of the actual end goals. The tasks may be completed in a way that meets the description of the work – but does not actually fit into the final product. This creates more work at the end of a project to make ill-fitting work fit into a final product – causing more delays, rework, and shoddy product.That, in turn, creates more learned helplessness.

Limiting WIP as a Cure for Learned Helplessness

Eldred comes to work on Monday and finds that the company has been bought by a new CEO. His name is Markus Blume. Blume walks into the office and declares, “My word! This company has a lot of goals and no products!” Everyone fidgets.Markus says, “You know what? I think it would be a capital idea if we all shelved about half this stuff for Q1 and just focused on completing some things.”Silence.This guy is clearly mental.Everyone, from the project managers to the rank and file, are aghast. “You can’t postpone projects C, D, and E! They are important!”Eldred gives an impassioned speech for D especially.Markus looks simultaneously disgusted and amused.“Of course they are important. But .. just say for a second we actually finish something. Wouldn’t that be important?”Blank stares greet him. Everyone knows that this company doesn’t actually release things. They’ll just lay people off.But, learned helplessness works in Mr Blume’s favor. Everyone goes and does what they are told.Teams are re-formed. Lots of work is put on the back burner, but the front burners are turned way up.Two new, larger and dedicated, teams are directed at projects A and B. A third team, called the Deming team, is built to look around the company and notice where things can be improved. Years of panic-driven management has resulted in tons of bad process, horrible systems, and neglected tasks. The Deming team is there to remove the bad constraints, create healthy ones, and clean up the mess.Eldred is steaming mad for losing project D, the fact that it is scheduled for later in the year is of little comfort. He knows his project, project B, will be delayed just like always.Tuesday, Eldred shows up and gets to work on Project B. At the end of the day, he is still dealing with the loss of project D. So much so that he hardly notices that he was very productive that day.Wednesday, the B team gathers and talks about strategy. They haven’t even been given a deadline! They feel rudderless. How are they going to finish without a deadline? Surely this will take forever.Maybe they need to invent their own goals, someone suggests.And they do. This is post 7 in a 10 part series on Why Limit Your WIP.  Read post 8 Awareness: Why Limit Your WIP VIII in the Why Limit Your WIP series.  Also, see the index for a list of all of them.

Healthy Constraints: Why Limit Your WIP VI

Great floods have flown from simple sources. ~ William Shakespeare

flood before and after

When we employ healthy constraints, we encourage flow. In the economy we create, our goal is create a flow of work that results in a flow of value creation that in turn results in a flow of revenue that enables us to keep up with the flow of work.

Healthy Constraints – Flow

As with a river, the right constraints make healthy flow. We have a garden on the shore, as commercial boats travel up and down the waterway. In this controlled environment, we enjoy predictability and they ability to act.In this case, the healthy constraints on the river give us the first picture. Water is tamed and the couple are enjoying the view.

No Constraints – Flooding

When the river does not adhere to these constraints, we get destructive flooding. Water goes everywhere. There is no predictability. Rather than having a garden, we spend our team reacting to the flood waters, working to avoid destruction rather than create value.In this case, a lack of constraints caused by too much WIP (water in progress?) caused destructive flooding which not only drove the couple inside, but also utterly destroyed the beautiful garden.

Too Many Constraints – Diminished Flow

The other extreme would be a huge dam upstream from the property which would remove all water from the river. This would leave a big muddy mess, no commercial boat traffic, and no view for the couple to enjoy.

Balance and Healthy Constraints

When we limit our work-in-progress, we are seeking to place healthy constraints into our work economy that promotes healthy flow.Too Much: If we limit our WIP too much, we will be single mindedly working on one task at a time and ignoring all else – with large potential social costs. We will dry up our ability to converse. We will over-focus.Not Enough: No WIP limiting creates the flood of work we see every day.Balance: You know, there’s a reason that they call it a “balancing act.” The world spins on its axis as it hurtles through space. Our continents are all inexorably continuing their drifting ways. Tectonic plates cause tremors in the most stable of locations.Change is constant. Disruptions are the norm. Balance, forever and without fail, is impossible.Understanding what it is we are balancing – that’s vital.

What Makes a Healthy Constraint

If you're interested in 'balancing' work and pleasure, stop trying to balance them. Instead make your work more pleasurable. ~ Donald Trump

DerekKanban

Yes, that’s right, even Donald Trump gets it.When we go to balance, we need to understand that creating too many rules (constraints) is self-defeating. Each rule that we add is another brick in the dam of our river. Yes, it can control the flow – but it’s a brick. Once it’s there, you can only remove it with force and the removal will have impacts.So, as the Donald is suggesting, sometimes the creation of a healthy constraint is based on your point of view.  Often limiting work-in-progress does not require us to make new rules, but to simply accept that overloading ourselves is counter-productive.Simply setting a WIP limit on our Personal Kanban or our team kanban, is a visual indicator of our commitment to this minimal constraint.This Personal Kanban shows the minimal constraint of Derek Huether’s WIP limit of 3. In this board, if Derek were to run into a situation where he had to pull a 4th item into his WIP column – he can do that.Derek has taken no blood-oath saying he will never exceed his WIP limit. This is healthy constraint – not a law.This flexibility gives Derek the freedom and autonomy to deal with situations as they arise. The forth work item in WIP will not make him pay a fine or cost him his job – but it will make him very aware that he is violating the constraint and that there will be penalties for completion time and quality of the items currently in-flight.He will also work, as quickly as possible, to get back to his WIP limit of 3.To drive this point home: let’s quickly definite healthy and unhealthy constraints:Healthy Constraint: Does the minimum required to reward a desired behavior while retaining maximum flexibility.Unhealthy Constraint: Codifies and makes mandatory desired behavior and limits flexibility. This is post 6 in a 10 part series on Why Limit Your WIP. Read post 7 Focus: Why Limit Your WIP VII in the Why Limit Your WIP series.  Also, see the index for a list of all of them.Personal Kanban image courtesy of Derek HuetherFlood image courtesy of Melissa Will