The Pen: The Handoff Column

Modus Board with the Pen

In our work, we have tasks we need to do, tasks we are doing, and tasks we’ve completed. We know we have a WIP limit and that we shouldn’t exceed it. But tasks aren’t always as tidy as we’d like. We don’t just start tasks and work until they’re DONE. Tasks, very often, involve input from others over whom we have little or no control.

For this purpose, Tonianne and I use THE PEN. In the board to our right (our actual board), you can see that Toni started working on getting a contract amended and then had to send that off for review and comment. While it’s gone, we don’t want to take her away from her other tasks. So she’s moved it into The Pen where it will reside until the outside party has done their bit.

We are blessed on this day to only have one item in THE PEN. Ordinarily we have five or six. When they stack up, it’s a sign that we’ve let them linger too long and should follow up on the tickets. We will also, if need be, set a deadline or a reminder on tasks in THE PEN. Today, that’s not the case – she’s reasonably sure that she’ll get a reply sometime by the end of the week.  However, if tasks are going to sit in THE PEN for a long time or if there is a deadline we have to meet, we will certainly set a date to check on it.

We want to limit our WIP to lighten our cognitive load and let us focus. However, we will often find ourselves in a position where we have several things waiting action by others. It’s okay to sequester these tasks and move ahead with active work.

Do The Right Small Thing

171463865_36ee36f70e_q

When you look at your Personal Kanban, do you have tasks like “Do the Dishes” or are they more like “Build a House”?

If they’re more like the latter, ask yourself why.

Good Things Are Completed In Small Packages

Lean thinking asks us, in industry speak, reduce our batch sizes. This is their way of saying we should find tasks that can be completed quickly, effectively, and without many surprises.

We are more likely, whether at work or at home, to complete small tasks than large ones. Why?

They’re Small – First off, small tasks are simply that. They’re small. We can therefore complete them in less time.

They’re Understandable – Small tasks are easy to grasp. We can easily envision what needs to be done, how much uninterrupted time it should take, and what the end state will look like.

They are Stable – If a small task is something we can get done quickly, it means the chance of interruption is less and the potential number of complications is low. With most of our work, interruptions actually provide the most complication. That complication adds instability to our estimates.

They are not Scary – Large tasks, because we know full well that they are instable, are frightening. They evoke our fear response,  making us procrastinate, making us spend more time planning how to mitigate risk, and distracting us while actually doing the work. Small tasks, because we understand them and they are stable are much less scary.

We are Confident – A small, stable, and understandable task is something we can promise to someone else and feel confident about the promise.

We can Knock Them Out – Think about how good a day feels when you move a lot of tickets off your Personal Kanban. Now, think of days where nothing moving. Sluggish movement on the Personal Kanban makes us feel sluggish as well.

Small Deliveries Make a Big Delivery

When  we start a large project (and there certainly are large projects) we need to look at that project and figure out what the units of value are in it. Is this project something that has to be done all at once? Are there elements of this project that can be delivered quickly to provide value along the way? What do my customers really want from this project? What is the likelihood of interruptions causing me to shelve this project for long periods of time? Can I come back to this project and remember where I was?

If we can divide the project into smaller pieces of deliverable interim value, then we can can start enjoying some of the benefits of the big task – even if is has yet to be fully realized.

Say you have a big project that is: renovate the basement. This involves moving everything out of the basement, ripping out the walls, moving plumbing, putting in new walls, putting in floors, doing new electrical, painting, getting new furniture, and then enjoying the basement.

Many people look at that task and say, “That’s big, I’d like to do that, but I don’t have time.”

There are smaller tasks there, however. The first might be, “Go through basement and donate all unused or unwanted items.” (For some of us, even this is a big task).  After that might come a task of “Get a new sofa” or even “Draw up basement plans”. Each of these provides immediate value and may well change the outcome for the larger project. Say you get rid of the clutter in the basement and find, lo and behold, there’s a lot more room down there now.

Now, instead of gutting the basement, you can do a few coats of paint, a few simple repairs, and you have a much more livable space.

Throughput of the Small

In my own life, I had a huge office with people working in it every day for 10 years. I also had a home studio where I had been both working and writing for 10 years. When I closed the office, I was left with 10 years of combined office and home paperwork and other junk.

I set aside a plan where each day I needed to take out one wastebasket worth of recycling. Over the course of a few months (I travel a lot), I was able to work my way through the mountain of combined personal, Modus, and Gray Hill history. If I had sat down and done that large task all in one sitting, it would have left me unable to write or work for clients. It would have been boring and, likely, I would have lost interest mid-way through and started just picking up huge piles of paper and shredding it without looking at it.

Using a small task throughput model like this, where I do a little a time, I could keep focus, work my way to completion, and not have to worry about the huge daunting task.

The Pen: Managing Stalled Tasks

This question is from an interview I just did with an internal magazine with ExileSoft, a Sri Lankan company. The question has been haunting me, though, so I’m extending my reply in this post.

Thushara’s question:

“I started to practice Personal Kanban. But I got stuck at some point.  I ended up having too many tasks in the “Pen” which never moved.  (This interview was a good example. It was there over 9 months). What should I do?”

Answer:

The Pen

When we first created THE PEN to allow us to sequester tasks delayed by forces beyond our control, we realized that it ran the risk of becoming a sinkhole - a place where work would fall never to be seen again.Here we see a kanban with a THE PEN column. The ticket in there says “Schedule Plumber”. If we didn’t have a column like THE PEN our DOING column would quickly become mired in work that wasn’t complete - but we could not work on.So THE PEN is necessary in Personal Kanban, but, as Thushara has found, it doesn’t stay looking nice and neat like this for long. It fills up with every promise someone has ever made to us and we’re left with the visual record of eternal repeating disappointment.Okay, maybe it’s not that bad.But, for us, half exercised options (which is what a half-done task is) are unacceptable. So, we have a few rules of thumb:MAKE THEM ACTIONABLE: Items in THE PEN should either be obviously waiting on work by others and have born on and revisit dates. When you move something to THE PEN, note when it went in, why it is there, and when you should revisit it.FINISH BEFORE START: Always look at your Pen before your pull a new task. Clean your house before you buy new things.WIP LIMITS: Set limits on the Pen – both for age and for number of tasks. When you reach a limit, you need to place concerted effort in getting rid of those tickets.ASK WHY: If you see tasks backing up ask yourself  “Why are these in THE PEN?” Because, you know what? If you didn’t have the Personal Kanban … it would still be stuck. You’d just forget about it over time. So, is it in the pen because it isn’t relevant anymore? Is it there because a project didn’t get finished?ACT:You need to act on those tickets. You can do one of the following:

1. Nothing – If you are honestly waiting on someone and there is nothing you can do, then leave it in THE PEN.

2. Refresh – Contact the people on the card(s) and remind them that you are waiting

3. Escalate – If there is an escalation path (someone to involve of higher rank to increase the urgency of the task for others) bring them in. If there is not, contact the people who are holding up the work and make the ticket’s value for you very clear to them.

4. Push – You have a pull system but others do not. If a card is stuck simply because others are procrastinating or don’t care – take the card to them and work it off your board.

5. Recategorize – If this task is not waiting for a person to do something, but for an event to happen (like a trade show or a deliverable deadline) that is forseeable and in the future, declare this task done and make a new ticket for follow up at that later date which can go in your backlog.

6. Kill it – If the option value for this task has expired or the coordination costs are too high, you can decide that ticket is done and contact the people letting them know you’ve had to kill it.

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.