Why Not a WIP of One?: Why Limit WIP Series, Post 2

With only two guiding principles - Visualize your work and Limit your WIP - much of Personal Kanban seems fairly straightforward. But it’s not as obvious as it seems, and there’s actually a lot going on under the hood.Tons, actually. So let’s discuss.We said in the previous post we want to limit our work-in-progress, our “WIP,” and set it within a reasonable limit. But there’s still some confusion about what WIP really addresses.Does it mean:

A: At this very moment, what task am I actively doing with my hands?

or

B: At this very moment, what tasks am I am actually doing with my brain?

To be clear, your brain does more than your hands.This goes back to the role of the visual control in your life. As a visual control, your Personal Kanban keeps you honest about the work being done in your head.  The visual control is not necessary there to track what’s going on in your hands.So the Personal Kanban doesn’t need to tell you (A).This comment was left on our latest post How to Set Your WIP Limit:

Interesting. My WIP limit on my personal kanban has always been 1. Perhaps it’s just the way I’ve got it set up. For instance, right now the card I have in work is “read blog posts and comment”. Now, I have a ‘waiting’ lane for cards where I’m blocked from taking any direct action. So by having a different lane I suppose that’s an additional WIP item since it’s not complete, but I like to split that out if I can’t take any action on it myself at the moment. It re-enters my pull queue when the block has been resolved.What do you think about that Jim? Can I do better?-Josh

We’ve encountered numerous people who set their WIP limit to one and believe they are working on only one thing at a time. They will actually move cards in and out of DOING to note whether they are actively working on them. Again, what you are doing with your hands should tell you this.However, those tasks that were moved back into WAITING are still active. They are still IN PROGRESS. Simply because your fingers aren’t moving them right now, doesn’t mean your brain is not still DOING them.This is important, as the Zeigarnik Effect tells us two things about how we work:1: We have a psychological need to complete a task. Incomplete tasks tend to create intrusive thoughts, causing us to dwell on what we’ve left unfinished.2: We forget things that we’ve completed.In the book and in our talks, we go into great detail about how this impacts our work. For now, let’s focus on #1.When we begin a task and leave it unfinished, our brain keeps thinking about it. Psychologically we need closure, which can come from two sources - actual completion or officially deciding not to complete.If we have a column in our Personal Kanban that is just holding incomplete tasks, there will be an irresistible temptation to put more and more tasks in that column. We will come up with excuses like, “This one is more important” or “I don’t have time for that right now,” or “I’ll get to it later.”We want the DOING column to exert pressure on us. Our goal with Personal Kanban is to have a realistic WIP limit that is honestly displayed so that we can understand our options, better manage our work, and finish what we begin.More on this in future posts in the Why Limit WIP Series.

PK Basics: Why Limit Your WIP Series, Post 1

Limit your Work in Progress

In Personal Kanban we have only two rules. One of them is to limit your WIP.That sounds simple enough. But what does limiting your WIP really imply?This series describes what we mean by "WIP," why it's important to limit it, and - with all the competing demands on our time - how we can begin to go about doing just that.

WIP = Work-in-Progress

WIP is an acronym for "work-in-progress." It's the proverbial "stuff on your plate," the "balls you are juggling." It's the work you've begun and currently have in process.Now consider those things in your life that can and will at some point constitute your WIP:  deliverables you have at the office, improvement projects piling up at home, monthly bills that need tending to, doctors appointments that need scheduling, phone calls that need returning. Now take into account the things you enjoy doing (but that often get put on the back burner), like taking a photography class or working on your yoga practice. Things you both need and want to accomplish can add up to a huge number of tasks you have to hold in your head simultaneously.Some of these tasks are fairly low-impact. Others are more challenging and might require additional attention.We want to limit the number of active tasks we juggle because we have a "capacity" - a maximum amount of work we can process at a given time. We simply cannot do more work than we can handle.

What Happens When We Don’t Limit WIP

When we exceed the amount of work we can handle, it heightens our distraction and decreases our concentration.  Our attention to detail suffers, we leave things unfinished, or compromise the quality of our finished product.  All of these outcomes create more work or us in the future.

Forgetting

When we forget something - whether it entails leaving out important details or missing a deadline - invariably someone else will point out our misstep. When they do,  a conversation (most likely a pointed one) often ensues. Addressing and compensating for missteps takes time and effort, compounding cost, and ultimately frustration.

Leaving Things Unfinished

When we leave things incomplete we have two outcomes: (1) We never finish them or (2) We finish them later.For case (1) it's likely we've wasted time, effort, and resources.In case (2) we return to the task at a later date, when the task's context (its need, impact,  or resources available) might have changed. Oftentimes that requires looking at the task and figuring out exactly where we left off,  why we made the decisions we did, and what – exactly – was our preferred course to completion. This reorienting process of remembering and reorganizing likewise can consume time, and incur additional effort and resources.

Compromising Quality

A job poorly executed is sometimes worse than a job left incomplete. When work is done poorly, it usually contains defects. When defects become work multipliers, there are consequences down the line: defects can slow work down, break something else, or even hurt someone. Or they might just make your work product less helpful than it could have been had proper care been taken initially. If your defect is deemed serious enough to require repair (in essence, doing your work over again), first that defect must be discovered, then appreciated, then discussed, then deemed worthy of repair, then the repair needs to be identified, then acted upon.And those are the easy ones.When we compromise the quality of our work, we don’t just “do a bad job,” we leave someone to clean up an expensive and time consuming mess.

What Happens When We Do Limit WIP

We'd like to say that limiting WIP will solve all these problems, but it won’t. Nothing makes these things go away entirely.However, not limiting WIP means we are pretty much guaranteed to fall victim to these time wasters, and we are guaranteed to do it often.When we limit our WIP, we have less distractions. We are able to focus on correct decisions, completion, and quality.When we set a WIP limit, we are telling ourselves and the world around us that we want to get work done quickly, and we want to do a quality job.Even though prioritizing some tasks over others means some tasks have to wait, those tasks will still be completed sooner than they would have if we started them all right away. Since we are no longer paying the penalties for forgetting, incompletion, or poor quality, the work we finish is done faster and does not cause additional work.

What’s Next

This is just the tip of the iceberg as to why we should limit WIP. Over the upcoming months, we will be releasing more benefits to both Limiting Your WIP and Visualizing Your Work.Until then, there are other related resources on this site. Simply check out articles tagged “WIP,” or visit the PK 101 page.

What If I Had A Slack Card?

Showing Slack Card

“All things in moderation, including moderation.”― Mark TwainIn yesterday’s post, you may have noticed that we have a “Slack Card” in our Personal Kanban for the day.The problem we, like most people, were having was this:Productivity feels good.The Zone feels good.But productivity and the zone can lead to burnout.Just like Pomodoro includes rests every 25 minutes, we wanted to include a Pomodoro that was nothing but slack.What we assumed was that we have eight half hour pomodoros in an eight hour work day.Interruptions, non-focused tasks, and other minutia tend to make pomodoros not start back-to-back.Of those eight, the slack card is kind of a “get out of jail free” card. It can let you spend a free half hour just resting, it can be spent collaborating on less focused tasks, it can be used to “throw away” if interruptions stop you from being able to do one of your Pomodoro.  Ultimately it’s a visual place holder for an option. You be the judge.

Just Released: Why Plans Fail: Cognitive Bias, Decision Making, and Your Business.

Cog Bias book_cover_artboard EDITABLE

A few months ago, I wrote a series of posts in this blog about cognitive bias. Those became the pre-writing for this short ebook: Why Plans Fail.It’s $2.99, or free if you have Amazon Prime.This is the first in our new MemeMachine Series, which will be little eBooks like this that introduce a topic and begin discussions.Here’s the writeup for it from Amazon:Business runs on decisions. Recently, we've discovered that people aren't the great decision makers we thought they were.Business relies on estimates, plans, and projections - and we all know how accurate they tend to be. Careers are made, careers are broken based on accurate estimation and planning.But what if the successes and failures of these projects were not based on the prowess of those making the plans? What if success or failure were more often the result of a more complex set of events?Why Plans Fail directly addresses our ability of to plan, to forecast, and to make decisions.Written by Jim Benson, an urban planner, software developer, and business owner who has planned and built everything from small software projects, to houses, to urban freeway systems - Why Plans Fail is told by someone with much skin in the estimation and planning game.This short work is the first in the Modus Cooperandi Mememachine series - which looks specifically at underlying issues that directly impact the success of teams, companies, and individuals. The Mememachine series is meant to start conversations and advance discussion.

Pomodoro Daisuki–Session Based Personal Kanban and Pomodoro

Today I installed the Pomodoro Daisuki app in Chrome and thought I’d give a quick experience report.

So far today, Tonianne and I have run our entire workday using Pomodoro Daisuki. Yes, it has the usual Pomodoro functionality, but some extra benefits.

Daisuki Kanban Desktop

As you can see here, it comes with the fastest set up, easiest use cardwall tool I think I’ve ever seen. It enforces no WIP limits, but it does give you cards with colored “tape” to quickly set up and distinguish a variety of tasks.

Today, Tonianne and I are editing our next book about using Personal Kanban for Meetings. So we’ve already done a few Pomodoros in the book.

The nice thing here is that when you are in focused productivity mode, you don’t want to move around from application to application. With this, you can easily move the current work to done and then pull in the next task.

Pomodoro Daisuki top line

Pomodoros work as you would expect them. You hit the “Start” button and you get a 25 minute timer. A nice touch is that when you have break time, you can choose between a five and a fifteen minute respite.

The “Show Stats” button is compelling, but in the end it merely shows a count of the Pomodoros you’ve done so far. One can hope that it will have more features in the future.

daisuki resting

The only drawback is that once you start a Pomodoro or a break … you can’t stop! There is no “oops” button. So it treats the Pomodoro timebox a little too religiously. But, because these types of things tend to be fixed over time – I invite you to check the comments below to see if they do, indeed fix this.