Invisible work competes with known work. Invisible work blindsides people, leaving teams unaware of mutually critical information. Married to this problem, is the question, how does one plan for, or allocate capacity for the invisible? It’s tough to analyze something you can’t see. Incognito work doesn’t show up well in metrics. This talk provides useful ways to bring visibility to the problems that steal you time away.

1. Dominica DeGrandis
@dominicad
Time Theft – How Hidden & Unplanned Work
Commit the Perfect Crime

2. 5Unplanned
work
The Thieves
Conflicting
priorities
Too much
WIP
Neglected
work
Unknown
Dependencies

3. THIEF TOO MUCH WIP
When demand exceeds capacity
demand
capacity

4. WHY TOO MUCH WIP MATTERS
Effective
people say
yes
deliberately
Too much WIP delays the delivery of customer value

5. WIP is the leading indicator
that your FLOW is congested.
33 boats moving through a canal
at one time makes for a long wait.

6. Value Stream: activities done from beginning
to end for a product/service in order to provide
business value.
@dominicad
Continuous smooth & fast FLOW of customer
value makes for happy customers.
The biggest deterrent to FLOW is
too much WIP
FLOW: fast & smooth movement of work
across the Value Stream
Improve FLOW:
§ MWV
§ reduce batch size
§ Build in quality

7. WHY TOO MUCH WIP DETERS FLOW
@dominicad
“I’m sorry, but
all our agents are
busy at the moment.”
https://www.leancompetency.org/lcs-articles/the-equation-of-lean/
https://leanlaborstrategies.com/2013/12/13/those-office-workers-have-it-made/
WIP & Flow time have a relationship
Wait times increase as utilization approaches 100%

8. @dominicad
EXPOSE WIP

9. THIEF TOO MUCH WIP STEALS TIME WHEN...
Ø Context switching is common
Ø We start new tasks before finishing older tasks
Ø Work gets neglected and ages
Molecules Of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine, Candace B. Pert, 1999

10. @dominicad
Why do we think we can finish things faster than we actually
can?
Tend to underestimate distractions
yes to requests that we should decline

11. @dominicad
Sometimes burnout cultures play a role, but ….
Many of the
reasons why
we’re
overwhelmed
starts with our
own doing.
Why do we say yes to doing more work than we have
capacity to do? 4 reasons

12. @dominicad
#1 - I don’t want to let the team down.

13. @dominicad
#2 I’d rather start a something new than toil in something
unglamorous.
*optimize for fun
Implementing new
microservices
using Docker containers
might be more satisfying
than preparing for a
security audit.

14. @dominicad
#3 I Didn’t realize how big the request was.
Everything always takes
longer than we think it
ought to.

15. Ø Yes is easier than no.
Ø SBs cause us to take on even
more work
Ø We overload ourselves and
our teams
#4 The boss asked me
Call for change – look at practices found in mature DevOps culture

16. MATURE DEVOPS CULTURE
@dominicad
§ information flows
§ learning climate is
investment
§ high cooperation & trust
§ people like their job
è
DevOps practices emerged from Lean movement: continuous improvement, systems
thinking, value stream mapping, focus on delivering customer value, and respect
for people. It’s these Lean attributes that embody the “Lean” house.

17. @dominicad
THE LEAN HOUSE
§ Respect for people
§ Leadership
§ Continuous Improvement
§ Value
§ Flow
Pay attention to this visual cue

18. HOW TO UNMASK WIP OVERLOAD
@dominicad
Map out workflow to see where work gets stuck..
Partially completed work is expensive – make it visible to provoke
conversations on how to speed it up.

19. @dominicad
Improve Flow by making work visible

20. “WHY IS THIS
EXPENSIVE PIECE
OF BUSINESS VALUE
STUCK?”
@dominicad

21. 1. UNPLANNED WORK
2. CONFLICTING PRIORITIES
3. DEPENDENCIES
4. NEGLECTED WORK
@dominicad
START WITH FINDING TIME THIEVES

22. #1 UNPLANNED WORK
@dominicad
THIEF UNPLANNED WORK
An Interruption –
usually to fix a problem
Ex: Break fix, expedites,
incidents, fires

23. #1 UNPLANNED WORK
@dominicad
UNPLANNED WORK CUTS INTO PLANNED WORK

24. PLAN FOR UNPLANNED WORK
Uncertainty abounds in this world. It will always exist, so plan for
it. Put yourself in a position so that unplanned work won't kill you.
Completed maintenance reduces
unplanned work.
WannaCry ransomware attack

25. donedoingTo do
Unplanned
work
Planned
work
validate
HOW TO UNMASK UNPLANNED WORK
Maintenance
work

26. THIEF CONFLICTING PRIORITIES
@dominicad

27. ANTICIPATE CONFLICTING PRIORITIES
@dominicad
End-of-month invoicing competes with entering payables
and responding to customer account upgrade requests.
For time sensitive, cadence-
driven work, give other work a
lower priority.
accounting EoM task – expense rpts

28. HOW TO UNMASK CONFLICTING PRIORITIES
X
donedoingTo do
Expedites
and
Unplanned
validate
Team
improvements
Business
requests
Cadence
work

29. @dominicad

30. THIEF INVISIBLE DEPENDENCIES
@dominicad
Dependencies affect
almost everyone.
We work in webs of
interdependencies
https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/towards-true-continuous-
integration-distributed-repositories-and-dependencies-2a2e3108c051

31. EXPECT DEPENDENCIES
@dominicad
Dependencies are
Asymmetrical in their
impact.
“Every dependency doubles
your chance of being delayed”
- Troy Magennis

32. @dominicad
If you want to improve
performance, shift to loosely
coupled services and loosely
coupled teams empowered to
make changes.

33. HOW TO UNMASK DEPENDENCIES

35. Multilevel view of dependencies

36. THIEF NEGLECTED WORK
@dominicad
Neglected,
often
important
work sits idle
when other
work is seen
as a higher
priority.

37. WHY NEGLECTED WORK MATTERS
Partially
completed work
is very
expensive &
provides no
value to
customers.

38. YOU KNOW NEGLECTED WORK STEALS TIME
WHEN...
“When are we going to finish x?”
“We can’t get to x right now, because we’re
working on y.”

39. EXPOSE NEGLECTED WORK
5
donedoingTo do
Expedites/
Unplanned
work
validate
9 days 13 days
Revenue
protecting
Revenue
generating

40. @dominicad
NEXT STEP: TAKE CHARGE OF WIP
Tips to keep expensive business value flowing
§ If you don’t use WIP limits, start!
§ Let WIP limits be a creative friendly
constraint
§ Limit WIP to the teams capacity
§ Consider setting WIP limits that reflect
current reality

41. @dominicad
WIP limits intentionally insert tension

42. donedoingstudy
Silver
Bullet
Team
improvements
validate
Business
requests
(5)
(3)
(1)
CONSIDER WIP LIMITS BY WORK TYPE
----à$----à$-----à$---à

43. @dominicad
Limit WIP to Find Problems
Remove barriers of too
much WIP,
so people can deliver some
value before starting
something new.
Partially completed work
results in unmet value.

45. 5
delivereddoingNext
Expedites
Revenue
protecting
validate
Revenue
generating
ALL THE TIME THIEVES EXPOSED

46. THE TIME THIEF O’GRAM
Unplanned
work
Unknown
dependencies
Conflicting
priorities
Neglected
work
Too much
WIP
20
10
5
15
1

47. AGGREGATED TIME THIEF O’GRAM TREND
20
10
5
15
1
Oct 3 Oct 10 Oct 17 Oct 24

48. CONGREGATED TIME THIEF O’GRAM
20
10
5
15
1
June, 2017
Unplanned
work
Neglected
work
Unknown
dependency
Conflict
priority
Over
WIP

51. @dominicad
Make Work Visible to improve the Flow of value
High WIP = high wait times because other
items sit waiting for attention.
Make work visible to unmask the thieves
Limit WIP to enable smooth Flow

52. Problem
People take on more work than they have
capacity to do.
As leaders, please consider your positional
power when you ask people to do things.
Know that they will usually say yes, which
often overloads them, and their teams, and
slows the flow of delivering business value.

53. TO RECEIVE THE FOLLOWING:
§ A copy of this presentation
§ Updates on my upcoming book
Just pick up your phone and
send an email to:
dominica@ddegrandis.com
Subject: FLOW