Fred, a client, asked how I could help him get more work out of his resources. I asked if he meant people. He said yes. So I asked if he focused more on what each person did or if he focused on the team’s work. “Each person.” I smiled and said, “I have a deal
The discussion to now: Resource Efficiency vs. Flow Efficiency, Part 1: Seeing Your System Resource Efficiency vs. Flow Efficiency, Part 2: Effect on People Resource Efficiency vs. Flow Efficiency, Part 3: Managing Performance Resource Efficiency vs. Flow Efficiency, Part 4: Defining Accountability When you move from resource efficiency (experts and handoffs from expert to expert)
This is the next in a series of posts about resource efficiency vs. flow efficiency… Managers new to agile often ask, “How do I know people will be accountable?” Let’s tease apart the pieces of accountability: Accountable to the project for finishing their own work Accountable to their team for participating fully by doing their
Resource Efficiency vs. Flow Efficiency, Part 1: Seeing Your System explains resource efficiency and flow efficiency. Resource Efficiency vs. Flow Efficiency, Part 2: Effect on People explains why flow efficiency helps you get features done faster. Here, in part 3, I’ll address the performance management question. New-to-agile (and some experienced) managers ask, “How can I manage
If you haven’t read Resource Efficiency vs. Flow Efficiency, Part 1: Seeing the System, I explain there about optimizing for a given person’s work vs. optimizing for features. Some people (including managers) new to agile have questions about working in flow vs. optimizing for a person. The managers ask: How do I know the work
I’ve been working with a number of people who want to work in a more agile way. These nice folks have one stumbling block: resource efficiency vs. flow efficiency. This is partly because of how they see the system of work. If you ever used phases or a waterfall approach, you might have tried to
How does your team show progress? Do they use activity-based (cost accounting) measures? Or, do they demo running, tested features? And possibly use a product backlog burnup chart to see each feature set’s relative progress? How can we understand the costs of this progress? I am a big fan of demos and a product backlog
I’ve heard that the AA/PMI wants to create a manifesto for enterprise agility. I’m not sure we need a manifesto, but that’s fine. Here are the necessary conditions for enterprise agility: A culture of flow efficiency thinking. That means everyone collaborates across the organization to optimize up for one overarching goal. Limited planning horizons, with
Have you seen the Forbes article that has zero idea how efficient engineering teams work? They have a whole long list of “inefficiencies”. This is a quote from that article: Marking oneself as “in a meeting” on Slack Scheduling communications (Slack messages, emails, and code commits) for off-hours to appear active Blocking out private calendar
In How Centralization Decisions Create Friction, Increase Cycle Time, and Cost Money, Part 1, I discussed how removing support staff for departments and managers created longer cycle times. (And sometimes, increased friction so much that people could not easily do their jobs.) Removing those support staff was one indication the companies fell into the Economies