How to get more with less
Imagine a world where you could get more done if you did less. Sounds amazing, doesn’t it? Less stressful days, fewer deadlines and the time to focus on the task at hand. And still more work would get done. If I ever found a genie in a bottle, I would ask him to transport me to that world. If I did, he’d likely snap his fingers, and then nothing would happen. Because we all live in that world already.
Most teams are doing a bunch of things at the same time. And most companies work on a bunch of projects at the same time. To be fair, we all have tons of important stuff we need to get done. And when another important thing comes along, we need to start that too.
By limiting work in progress, we can all get more done in less time. Most companies are addicted to starting work, but the addiction seems to fade away when we talk about finishing. The result is a lot of busy people, but not much delivery of value. Small tasks that would get done in a day if everyone sat down together, takes months.
We start everything to be able to tell the boss or customer that “Yes, we’re working on that!” What we fail to mention is that we’re also working on a thousand other things, so it will take forever.
Another big reason for this sickness, is obsession with cost and resource utilization. You see, most work today is pretty complex stuff with lots of dependencies. This means every now and then you end up blocked, waiting for someone else. You obviously can’t sit and wait, so you have to start something new. Rinse and repeat, and suddenly you have ten different things going on. Before you know it, you are the blocker for everyone else instead.
The same thing happens in any team or company you interact with, and the result is a vicious cycle of growing queues everywhere. Now everyone is waiting for everyone, because everyone is busy with another task that they started because they were waiting for someone else. My head hurts.
Now everyone is waiting for everyone, because everyone is busy with another task that they started because they were waiting for someone else. My head hurts.
Reward everyone in an entire company for being busy, and suddenly no one will get anything done whatsoever. If you work in a large company, I’m sure you know what I mean. The graph below shows the lead time in a team that grows increasingly busy.
Developing software is inherently unpredictable. To be able to cope with that variability without large delays, the system (anyone involved) needs a fair amount of slack. If they don’t, the result will be cascading delays and infinite slowness. Give people less to do, and they will speed up.
To have people sit around with spare capacity sounds a bit counter intuitive. But is it really? Companies these days value speed above almost anything else. Time to market and the ability to innovate and deliver is the only thing that matters. Let me ask you this: If I suddenly get a bright idea and need someone to solve it yesterday, would it be best to have a busy team, or a team with spare capacity? Take your time, I have all day.
Limiting work in progress in teams is important, but it’s even more important to do the same at the company level. A good starting point can be to reduce the number of active projects or initiatives by 50–70%. A fun side effect is that since you can no longer do everything, you will be forced to focus on the most valuable things. So you’ll both go faster and do more high value stuff!
I’m sure you can’t wait to explain to your boss how this is all a brilliant idea. One way to start nudging her, may be to play the ping pong game.
Good luck!
