Why Does a Child Purposefully Cut Every Item in Their Art Work

Most of us in the Information Technology world are busy people.  We are certainly in the age of push engineering science overload and minimizing wasteful work at personal, professional person and corporate level is a constant goal.

From the Agile Manifesto, there are twelve principles[1] related to software delivery.  All the principles still accept deep meaning fifteen years after the institution of them, but 1 that repeatedly resonates with me is the tenth principle: "Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work non done–is essential".

When I've asked people who accept been in the Information technology manufacture for a long time, they will frequently question the thought of "maximizing the amount of work non done".  Why would one maximize not doing something?  Well, the concept shouldn't exist that tricky to empathize.  Let me provide a common case.

For me, context switching is a daily challenge to manage.  In my task, there are constant interruptions in the form of calls, Instant Messages, texts, emails and the old fashioned borer on my shoulder.  I've had an old, rather bad habit of wanting to "keep my inbox" clean and checking my email throughout the day.  Apparently I'k not the just one since over a third of Americans follow me in this practice[2].  This is a productivity killer since I'thou e'er switching between focused work and my emails.  This doesn't follow the Kanban-inspired "Stop Starting, Showtime Finishing" mantra.

Then more than frequently at present, I go along my email closed throughout the day and only go into it like to spelunking into a cavern.  Check it out only a few times a twenty-four hour period.  Productivity appears to take risen since I find myself finishing more before going on to the next chore.  And then this is about maximize the amount of work not done.  Don't check on email regularly since it's a productivity killer.

Now let'due south have this Lean-Agile principle to the software development world.  From Donald G. Reinertsen'due south book, "Flow"[3], at that place is a balance between the frequency of whatsoever transition (i.due east. checking your e-mail) and the holding price (i.e. others waiting for you to reply your e-mail).  This residuum is very tricky to meet since it is dependent on the situation.  If you get urgent emails daily that require instant attending (production organisation alerts, major back up incident, etc.) then checking your email frequency would exist necessary.

See the below overall conceptual chart of how to maximize your flow.  Sometimes, maximizing flow is articulate and like shooting fish in a barrel when at an individual level.  However, at the organizational and team levels information technology becomes far more complicated.  Merely through tracking and measuring the results will you exist able to determine the optimum place of maximizing the work not done.  Annotation sometimes the results will be surprising!

So accept for instance Scrum ceremonies like backlog refinement, sprint planning, dart reviews, sprint retrospectives and of form, the daily stand up.  If nosotros consider the daily standup, many team members frequently find it a "waste material of time".  That may indeed be the case.  For instance, if the team is collocated and regularly talk together, they may already take this key points of a stand known to each other.  Using tools like Jira, TFS, CA Technologies (one time Rally), VersionOne, etc. will also subtract the "chatter".  In this case, reducing the number of standups may really exist the best remedy and increase the amount of piece of work non done.

Scrum has a set of tools with a recommended set of cadences that should be synchronized in gild to simplify commitment and therefore maximize the piece of work not done.  This recommendation should be adjusted based on the needs of the arrangement.  Scrum is flexible, but withal organized but at a unlike levels.

A diligent leader will always be seeking for these areas of waste and pointing those out to their staff to address their own organizational bottlenecks, reducing the amount of waste.  For case, I've seen the Outlook calendar for a specific CTO in a big retail visitor where his schedule was booked pretty much 100% from ordinarily 7am – 5pm every single day.  Akin to a superhighway at 100% usage, this brings his productivity downward to a minimum where working early on mornings and evenings becomes necessary for daily piece of work and less on longer term vision, innovation and growth.  He should focus on maximizing that work non done by blocking out time for completing priority piece of work and thereby freeing up the resulting traffic jam for unexpected events.

 So when you are in the heart of your busy piece of work mean solar day, call back to continuously seek ways to maximize that work not done.  This is a never catastrophe process and will e'er demand action or otherwise decrease your enterprises' power to perform.

[ane] http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html

[2] http://world wide web.businessinsider.com/how-often-do-people-check-their-email-2015-8

[3] http://ardalis.com/principles-of-product-evolution-flow-book-review

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Source: https://www.cio.com/article/238531/the-art-of-maximizing-work-not-done.html

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