The document discusses delivering products sooner by starting work later through limiting work in progress, postponing commitments, reducing wait times, and saying no. It argues that starting early leads to multitasking instead of earlier delivery, and working harder does not make you faster. It recommends building a supporting structure to finish what's started, limit unfinished work, and make waiting times explicit.

1. Delivering sooner by
starting later
A counter-intuitive approach on
product delivery 🚚 📦

2. My promises
2
5 Flawed assumptions
that make your life harder when
building great products
5 kick-start tips
that support you to be more productive
without working harder

3. 3
Starting early leads to
multitasking and not to
earlier delivery
“Tame Your Work Flow” p. 61

4. “ The idea to postpone start of work
is hard to digest at first when you
have unmet demand outside the
system; especially if accustomed to
always starting work for the sake of
“serving the customer” and being
“responsive.”
4
Steve Tendon

5. 5
Starting
late does
not lead
to later
delivery
“Tame Your Work Flow” p. 73

6. 6
Working harder does
not make you faster “Tame Your Work Flow” p. 81, 85

7. 7
Working harder does
not make you faster
“Tame Your Work Flow” p. 88

8. 8
“Tame Your Work Flow” p. 93

9. “ You, in effect, initiate a denial of
service attack on yourself, and then
wonder why it takes so long for
things to get done.
9
Daniel Vacanti

10. 10
Letting people wait for
work is effective

11. “ Any time you try to shove items into
a system at a faster rate than items
can exit the system, you are met
with disastrous consequences.
11
Daniel Vacanti

12. Why it’s so hard to
say NO
5 reasons
for starting more work than we
can healthy do with our capacity.*
1. We are team players and we don't
want to let our tribe down. We get
endorphins from saying yes.
2. We do stuff for people who we like.
3. People are optimistic creatures. We
believe we can finish tasks faster than
we actually do.
4. We have fear of public humiliation or
being fired.
5. Starting something shiny and new
seems to be more fun than doing the
groundwork that it takes to get
something done.
* Making Work Visible - Dominica Degrandis

13. Make starting explicit.
13
Photo by Mikito Tateisi on Unsplash

14. Defer commitment.
Don’t accumulate
unfinished work.
14
Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash

15. Finish what’s started
and limit work in
progress.
15
Photo by Jens Herrndorff on Unsplash

16. Make waiting times
explicit.
16
Photo by Koushik Pal on Unsplash

17. 17
Photo by Daniel Burka on Unsplash
Summary
Limit work in progress, postpone
commitment, reduce wait times, say
no, build up a supporting structure.

18. 18
Single Tasking yields significant
performance superiority
Much higher flow
efficiency
More reliable flow
time and
significantly faster

19. 19
Single Tasking yields significant
performance superiority
… and significantly
more value
More work finished ...

20. 20
Thoughts?
Questions?
More on @swilluda (Twitter), Stefan Willuda (LinkedIn)

21. Deep dive sources
● Tame Your Work Flow - Steve Tendon and Daniel Doiron
https://leanpub.com/workflow
● Actionable Agile Metrics for Predictability - Daniel Vacanti https://amzn.to/2V3ty1G
● Hyper-Productive Knowledge Work Performance - Steve Tendon, Wolfram Müller
https://amzn.to/2UtcdyZ
● Your company can’t out-hire its problems https://medium.com/…
● Being ‘blocked’. It’s not what you might think. https://medium.com/…
● The flow-centered retrospective - Learn to make your team flow
https://medium.com/…
● Making Work Visible: Exposing Time Theft to Optimize Work & flow - Dominica
Degrandis https://amzn.to/2XzejBq
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22. Credits
Special thanks to all the people who made and
released these awesome resources for free:
● Presentation template by SlidesCarnival
● Photographs by Unsplash
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