A Perspective on Flow

As we recently workshopped our Q3 Business Agility strategy, it felt reminiscent of a post I wrote a handful of years ago. Given the emergent nature of this space I’ve made a few updates. However, the venerable works of Eliyahu Goldratt and Mary Poppendick that underpinned the original post are still timeless.

As practitioners we emphasise the foundations of the Manifesto, it’s 12 principles and respective methodologies (Scrum, KanBan, etc) when guiding organisations through their Agile journey. However, when faced with ageing backlogs, lengthy feedback loops, high WIP ageing, completing 80% of work with 20% of time left and significant quality issues expounding on the principals alone may not be enough. In my experience, shifting team focus to the “Flow” of work can not only have a huge impact on their ability to become hyper-productive but also serve as a more tangible rally (“the how”).

By “Flow” I mean prioritising a Theory of Constraints (TOC) perspective into the way teams think about and practice delivering value. What if instead of plastering Agile literature on office walls like West End shows in London tube stations we also ask a few questions like:

• Can the team easily visualise slack, blockers, waste, cycle time and value added activities in the delivery system?
• Does the team galvanise around common enemies to the flow of work (e.g. aged WIP)?
• Has the team identified and actively managing the systems most limiting constraint by leveraging the 5 focusing steps practice?
• Is the team verifying and deploying minimal viable functionality as often as possible?
• Does the team value finishing work in progress over starting new work?
• Do all functional disciplines that contribute and within the scrum team rally around the same goal (e.g. OKR driven product vision)?

By no means am I suggesting that attention to ceremonies, roles or the manifesto are less valuable than principles of “Flow”. On the contrary, as teams attempt to answer some of the questions above they embody Agile principles through practice. For example, if the team (developers, QA and product owner) collaborates tirelessly on finding ways to verify and deploy batches of minimal viable functionality as often as possible, they are living the principle(s).

Given the diversity of agile methodologies and practices, there are some indisputable measures of success for Technology based organisations. A few other them, Are we sustainably delivering high value, are we doing it fast enough, are customers happy and are we learning fast enough? That said, evangelising the Agile tools and process without addressing some of the fundamental questions that focus teams on the organisation’s outcomes, can become Agile theater.