The short answer is, every week or so, try to have a short retrospective with your team or alone (if you are working by yourself). When you have the meeting, review what’s happened and archive as you do.

Some of the tasks in your DONE column will spark introspection, some won’t. (Hopefully you don’t have to ponder all your work).

As you discuss the tasks, you can move them into your ARCHIVE where you store completed tasks. Or, if you are so inclined, you can throw them away.

In the video, the ARCHIVE is part of the software. With a physical board you can have your archive be a file folder or a shoebox.

None of us can know everything; each of us knows something; and we can put the pieces together if we pool our resources and combine our skills. ~ Henry Jenkins via Jabe Bloom

This was one of Jabe’s slides.

It reminds me of a discussion I had while I was living in DC with a recently retired CIA friend. We were discussing how intelligence was gathered in the past, and how current reality was more complex. Before we had a few, easily defined enemies who behaved according to fairly predictable patterns.

The Bad News

Today, we are working against a more amorphous “enemy.” By definition, the amorphous enemy is less defined. Because it is less defined we know less about it. Because we know less about it, it is more scary. Because it is more scary, it is more stressful.

In short, our enemies have become more complex, unknown, and scary.

This means two very important things.

1. We can’t have one standard response to threats

2. We are going to imagine a lot more danger than is actually there

In our own work, we feel these threats all the time. Too many tasks, too many data streams, too much stuff coming from too many directions. We don’t have time to think, let alone collaborate.

The Good News

The good news is that we can use Jabe’s quote from Jenkins to deal with this complexity more effectively. And we approach Jenkin’s counsel through Limiting WIP.

In our personal lives, we have the same problem as the CIA. The CIA has too many avenues of input. Too many distractions. And, oddly enough, too many experts. The only way they can solve their problems is through collaboration. The only way they can truly collaborate is to understand their own work and have the capacity for collaboration.

The CIA used to have a linear problem. One, two, three other countries that were potential threats. Now they have an exponential problem. Potential threats that can form, execute, and disband before anyone knows who they are or why they did it.

The CIA cannot solve their exponential problems with the linear problem solving solutions of the past. They cannot rely on solitary agents or even small groups. The organization as a whole needs to collaborate to remain effective.

When I was growing up, I could choose between 4 TV channels, the telephone and maybe a movie at the theater for incoming streaming media. Outside that, I could read a book, magazine, or newspaper. Or maybe I could listen to music on my stereo or Walkman.

At that time, we thought that was a pretty lengthy list. But it was a linear list. I could filter them out simply by walking away from them.

The other day during a lunch with a friend, my Android Phone buzzed non-stop with tweets, text messages, Facebook updates, Foursquare updates, phone calls, and emails. Finally, I shut it off. I had to apply “aggressive filtering” to my lunch. But that was not enough.

The number of distractions we have grows as the number of avenues for distractions grow. Not only that, but – like the CIA fearing more danger than is really there – even when the phone wasn’t vibrating, I was waiting for it to vibrate. Even when I shut the phone off, I could feel it was off and was vaguely worrying I was missing out on something. However, I was able to focus much more intently on my conversation.

When we limit our WIP, we are filtering our work. We are filtering distraction, filtering data sources, filtering complexity. But that is only a temporary solution. Just like if the CIA only focused on one hot-spot, they could focus, but they would be ignoring everything else. But their collaboration would mean nothing if there weren’t sub-groups actively focusing on specific tasks.

In this case, we want to limit our WIP so that we can focus in the service of becoming very aware of what we are doing, what we are not doing, and why. This lets us know, very well, what we know so we can begin to pool our resources and combine our skills. In our increasingly complex world, our role as individuals is changing. There’s too many things going on at once for any of us to take in, process, and act on.

When we limit our WIP, we are recognizing that we can either pay attention to some things with great effectiveness, or we can pay attention to many things with little effectiveness. If we choose the first path, we are creators, if we choose the second path, we are consumers.

Lastly, when we limit WIP and calm our own complexity, we are better able to find others to collaborate with, to add our unique value, and to create stronger teams. As we collaborate, we learn more about other disciplines and find ways to incorporate that learning our future work.

The word conjures up images of slothfulness, of days spent lazying about in a seaside hammock beneath the fronds of a blowing palm tree.

But relaxation is not necessarily sloth. Just because someone or something appears to not be fully utilized is not an indication of their disutility.

Consider the belts in your car’s engine. In order to operate effectively, they can’t be too tense, they must have some give. Engine optimization relies on belts having the appropriate amount of slack.

It’s the same with our work. We need slack for our own optimization. In our work, we’d like to have a degree of slack to:

1. Make sure we are able to focus on the tasks at hand;
2. Make sure we have the capacity to deal with unforeseen events;
3. Make sure we can stop periodically to allow our brains to perform vital functions in memory, processing, and regeneration; and especially to
4. Make sure we don’t work ourselves into an early grave.

When we have unlimited WIP, we tend to start multiple tasks concurrently, and then run in circles trying to complete them. As we’ve discussed in our previous posts in this series, overwork creates additional work, heightens stress, and results in a poor quality product.

Focus on Tasks at Hand

Slack allows us to focus on the tasks at hand simply by giving us the ability to work in a non-freaked, sans-OMFG state. In the absence of slack, we aren’t only working on our current task, we’re fretting because we know there are countless other tasks we’ve started and that they demand completion. We live with an underlying fear that something, somewhere will break and when it does, it’ll be unlikely we’ll be able to deal with it.

Slack is, in the end, a recognition that our time, our brainpower and our emotional fortitude are all limited. If we tax all these resources, we will not be able to do the work on our plate or deal with unforeseen events.

Unforeseen Events

When we’re overloaded with work, we invite panic. We invite emergencies. When we have zero capacity for new work, additional work exacerbates our overload. The thing is, unforeseen events are inevitable; they happen all the time. We can’t predict the future, we can only give ourselves the slack to deal with whatever may come our way – good or otherwise.

If we have three tasks in process and something unexpected comes along, we – at worst – have four tasks in flight. This is still a substantial number less than most people currently have.  This doesn’t make the unforeseen event a welcome one, but it does make it a manageable one.

Rest, Processing, and Catch-up

Francesco Cirillo’s simple yet profoundly powerful Pomodoro Technique invites us to use a timer set to 25 minutes during which we focus without distraction. The timer’s ring alerts us to rest. The ratio suggested is 25 minutes of work to 5 minutes of rest – and then repeat (taking an even longer break after 4 successive pomodori). This isn’t merely to let us have a “coffee break.” Our brains need recharge points.

The brain is not some easy going organ…it’s a resource hog.

When we’re working intently on something, our brain burns a lot of calories, uses a lot of water, and gets tired. Allowing periodic points of slack allows us to hydrate, grab a snack, and recharge.

Not only this, but the brain also works in three memory modes: short term, mid term, and long term. Having slack and taking breaks allows the brain to pause and write vital information from short to mid term memory. The more we overload ourselves with work, the more we forget.

Stayin’ Alive

As we can see, without incorporating slack into our work day, we end up taking on too much work, too much stress, and with too little down time. These factors decrease happiness and longevity. That’s not a good thing.

We limit our WIP specifically to achieve a comprehensible workload that allows us to complete, understand the costs of our choices, make better decisions, and react elegantly to life’s surprises.

With only two guiding principles – Visualize your work and Limit your WIP – much of Personal Kanban seems fairly straightforward. But it’s not as obvious as it seems, and there’s actually a lot going on under the hood.

Tons, actually. So let’s discuss.

We said in the previous post we want to limit our work-in-progress, our “WIP,” and set it within a reasonable limit. But there’s still some confusion about what WIP really addresses.

Does it mean:

A: At this very moment, what task am I actively doing with my hands?

or

B: At this very moment, what tasks am I am actually doing with my brain?

To be clear, your brain does more than your hands.

This goes back to the role of the visual control in your life. As a visual control, your Personal Kanban keeps you honest about the work being done in your head.  The visual control is not necessary there to track what’s going on in your hands.

So the Personal Kanban doesn’t need to tell you (A).

This comment was left on our latest post How to Set Your WIP Limit:

Interesting. My WIP limit on my personal kanban has always been 1. Perhaps it’s just the way I’ve got it set up. For instance, right now the card I have in work is “read blog posts and comment”.

Now, I have a ‘waiting’ lane for cards where I’m blocked from taking any direct action. So by having a different lane I suppose that’s an additional WIP item since it’s not complete, but I like to split that out if I can’t take any action on it myself at the moment. It re-enters my pull queue when the block has been resolved.

What do you think about that Jim? Can I do better?

-Josh

We’ve encountered numerous people who set their WIP limit to one and believe they are working on only one thing at a time. They will actually move cards in and out of DOING to note whether they are actively working on them. Again, what you are doing with your hands should tell you this.

However, those tasks that were moved back into WAITING are still active. They are still IN PROGRESS. Simply because your fingers aren’t moving them right now, doesn’t mean your brain is not still DOING them.

This is important, as the Zeigarnik Effect tells us two things about how we work:

1: We have a psychological need to complete a task. Incomplete tasks tend to create intrusive thoughts, causing us to dwell on what we’ve left unfinished.

2: We forget things that we’ve completed.

In the book and in our talks, we go into great detail about how this impacts our work. For now, let’s focus on #1.

When we begin a task and leave it unfinished, our brain keeps thinking about it. Psychologically we need closure, which can come from two sources – actual completion or officially deciding not to complete.

If we have a column in our Personal Kanban that is just holding incomplete tasks, there will be an irresistible temptation to put more and more tasks in that column. We will come up with excuses like, “This one is more important” or “I don’t have time for that right now,” or “I’ll get to it later.”

We want the DOING column to exert pressure on us. Our goal with Personal Kanban is to have a realistic WIP limit that is honestly displayed so that we can understand our options, better manage our work, and finish what we begin.

More on this in future posts in the Why Limit WIP Series.

A WIP Limit of 3 Makes Work Easy to Understand and Complete

In Personal Kanban we have only two rules. One of them is to limit your WIP.

That sounds simple enough. But what does limiting your WIP really imply?

This series describes what we mean by “WIP,” why it’s important to limit it, and – with all the competing demands on our time – how we can begin to go about doing just that.

WIP = Work-in-Progress

WIP is an acronym for “work-in-progress.” It’s the proverbial “stuff on your plate,” the “balls you are juggling.” It’s the work you’ve begun and currently have in process.

Now consider those things in your life that can and will at some point constitute your WIP:  deliverables you have at the office, improvement projects piling up at home, monthly bills that need tending to, doctors appointments that need scheduling, phone calls that need returning. Now take into account the things you enjoy doing (but that often get put on the back burner), like taking a photography class or working on your yoga practice. Things you both need and want to accomplish can add up to a huge number of tasks you have to hold in your head simultaneously.

Some of these tasks are fairly low-impact. Others are more challenging and might require additional attention.

We want to limit the number of active tasks we juggle because we have a “capacity” – a maximum amount of work we can process at a given time. We simply cannot do more work than we can handle.

What Happens When We Don’t Limit WIP

When we exceed the amount of work we can handle, it heightens our distraction and decreases our concentration.  Our attention to detail suffers, we leave things unfinished, or compromise the quality of our finished product.  All of these outcomes create more work or us in the future.

Forgetting

When we forget something – whether it entails leaving out important details or missing a deadline – invariably someone else will point out our misstep. When they do,  a conversation (most likely a pointed one) often ensues. Addressing and compensating for missteps takes time and effort, compounding cost, and ultimately frustration.

Leaving Things Unfinished

When we leave things incomplete we have two outcomes: (1) We never finish them or (2) We finish them later.

For case (1) it’s likely we’ve wasted time, effort, and resources.

In case (2) we return to the task at a later date, when the task’s context (its need, impact,  or resources available) might have changed. Oftentimes that requires looking at the task and figuring out exactly where we left off,  why we made the decisions we did, and what – exactly – was our preferred course to completion. This reorienting process of remembering and reorganizing likewise can consume time, and incur additional effort and resources.

Compromising Quality

A job poorly executed is sometimes worse than a job left incomplete. When work is done poorly, it usually contains defects. When defects become work multipliers, there are consequences down the line: defects can slow work down, break something else, or even hurt someone. Or they might just make your work product less helpful than it could have been had proper care been taken initially. If your defect is deemed serious enough to require repair (in essence, doing your work over again), first that defect must be discovered, then appreciated, then discussed, then deemed worthy of repair, then the repair needs to be identified, then acted upon.

And those are the easy ones.

When we compromise the quality of our work, we don’t just “do a bad job,” we leave someone to clean up an expensive and time consuming mess.

What Happens When We Do Limit WIP

We’d like to say that limiting WIP will solve all these problems, but it won’t. Nothing makes these things go away entirely.

However, not limiting WIP means we are pretty much guaranteed to fall victim to these time wasters, and we are guaranteed to do it often.

When we limit our WIP, we have less distractions. We are able to focus on correct decisions, completion, and quality.

When we set a WIP limit, we are telling ourselves and the world around us that we want to get work done quickly, and we want to do a quality job.

Even though prioritizing some tasks over others means some tasks have to wait, those tasks will still be completed sooner than they would have if we started them all right away. Since we are no longer paying the penalties for forgetting, incompletion, or poor quality, the work we finish is done faster and does not cause additional work.

What’s Next

This is just the tip of the iceberg as to why we should limit WIP. Over the upcoming months, we will be releasing more benefits to both Limiting Your WIP and Visualizing Your Work.

Until then, there are other related resources on this site. Simply check out articles tagged “WIP,” or visit the PK 101 page.

In yesterday’s post, you may have noticed that we have a “Slack Card” in our Personal Kanban for the day.

The problem we, like most people, were having was this:

Productivity feels good.

The Zone feels good.

But productivity and the zone can lead to burnout.

Just like Pomodoro includes rests every 25 minutes, we wanted to include a Pomodoro that was nothing but slack.

What we assumed was that we have eight half hour pomodoros in an eight hour work day.

Interruptions, non-focused tasks, and other minutia tend to make pomodoros not start back-to-back.

Of those eight, the slack card is kind of a “get out of jail free” card. It can let you spend a free half hour just resting, it can be spent collaborating on less focused tasks, it can be used to “throw away” if interruptions stop you from being able to do one of your Pomodoro.  Ultimately it’s a visual place holder for an option. You be the judge.

Before We Begin

There are some quick tips about a value stream.

1. It should match reality as closely as possible.
2. It should be only as detailed as necessary to see and understand your work flow.
3. As your understanding and contexts change, your value stream will also change.

These three tips are telling. Words like stream, flow, and value are all difficult to pin down. They change, they evolve. In tip number one, we want to match reality as closely as possible. We will never draw a map that perfectly matches our workflow forever.

The Beginning: Start with the Ends in Mind

What is it you are doing?

In a meeting you may be:

• fully discussing a topic
• coming up with action items
• planning a future set of tasks

At home you might be:

• delegating chores
• planning a vacation
• building a deck

During the workday you might be:

• creating documents
• managing staff
• building a section of an airplane

All nine of these might have very different end-states.

So, if we are writing a report, the end state might be “publish.”

The other end … your backlog … is usually called “Backlog” or “Ready”. That is where your value stream starts. So, for our publishing value stream, our backlog looks like this:

Next Step: Fill in the Blanks

Between start and finish is creation. What steps do you take to create something? Working backwards from publish, we might have collation, before that is final, before that is second draft, and before that might be the first draft.

This now starts to build a stream into which the specific sections of the report can flow. The report team can now track each section or chapter as it moves toward completion.

Important Bits to Remember

1. Your value stream is your best educated guess as to how your work is actually occurring.

For some teams, the value stream above will work nicely. They would likely have a report that is from a template and being updated or customized, because the value stream suggests a very orderly process with no surprises or constant re-writes. Other teams will have a value stream that visualizes more editing, document re-organization, or people involved.

2. Your value stream will change.

As mentioned above, your value stream will change as you better understand your work. You do not need to sit around for a month figuring out the perfect mapping of your value stream. Just get one up and start working. You can refine as you move along. Different phases of projects may require very different value streams. Do not allow yourself to fall into the trap of rigid process.

3. Your Value Stream is Fault Tolerant

If you move a stickie to the right and something changes to make you move it back to the left – this is not a problem. It is reality. You really did move a chapter from the first draft to the second draft, conditions changed and then it moved back to the first draft stage again.

This is a Personal Kanban 101 Post. See others in the series.

“Yes, well that’s the fallacy of  work / life balance, isn’t it? I mean…it’s all life.”

~ Lean Coffee participant, Sydney June 2011

The Fallacy of Work / Life Balance – Work life balance is more than personal and it is more than a choice. Whether we are employers or employees, we need to recognize and respect that “work” is part of life, not some opposing force we balance against life. Studies show that a strong collaborative corporate culture helps organizations weather the current economic downturn better. Pre-Lean Campconversations have drawn focus on this fallacy and toward respect in the workplace.

Work / Life Balance. It’s one of those concepts that just simply falls apart under the slightest scrutiny. At what point at work do we cease to be alive?

I’ve just come off two weeks of working / living with AMP, a large financial services firm based in Sydney, Australia. This is a conservative company that is examining just what “conservative” actually means. The conclusions people were coming to were very exciting for me.

Several people agreed that people at AMP bifurcated their lives. They would come to work, focus on work, and then leave at the end of the work day to return to their homes and presumably to their “lives.” Everyone agreed that this scenario was true…for other people. But not for themselves.

As we spoke they realized that they were holding back at the office, because they assumed their co-workers were bifurcating their lives – but in reality very few people actually did so. Everyone was wanting work / life … balance?

No.

They like their work. They like their lives. There was no division. There was no opposing weight to balance.

What they wanted was their home life to respect their work life and vice versa. They wanted these two elements of their lives to stop being a zero sum game. Some days home life happened during working hours. Some days it was the other way around.

Some days …? Or maybe all days.

Definitely all days.

Life happens during life hours.

Work / Life Balance is a fallacy. It’s all living. Right now, you are living. Wherever you are reading this, you are living. And everywhere you go today, you’ll be living there, too.

Now, I ask you. In this moment, what is the thing of highest value you could be doing?

Think about it.

Then do it.

Image by Tonianne DeMaria Barry.

For the last four weeks, you’ve barely slept a wink. You know your team is behind. They know they’re behind. But the deadline is firm. Your team promises you – nay, vows to you it will be done on schedule. You, in turn, promise the client who in turn, promises their bosses. Their bosses are promising their clients …

Everything is riding on this release.

You close your office door and look at the remaining unfinished requirements. You begin to add up the time you think it will take to complete.

Nope. Not even close.

You go to your team and tell them what you’ve found. They get upset and begin yelling about how meetings like this are what slows them down. “If only we could just do our work!”

You yell back. “We’re too far behind! We’ll never finish!”

The situation is as predictable as it is unnecessary.

What we have here is not necessarily a failure to communicate but instead, a confluence of avoidance behaviors exacerbated by a lack of a visual control.

Huh?

Okay, it’s kind of convoluted, so let’s bullet it out:

• No one ever had a device that could show – visually – the state of the project and the context in which decisions were made;
• Since no one could see what was happening, they relied on reports that lagged decision-making and often told an incomplete story;
• Incomplete elements were then left to be discussed in meetings, which were often adversarial, conducted hastily, and poorly documented;
• People were then required to rely on individual memory and interpretation of events;
• When these memories diverged, they became angry when their interpretations were perceived as being different from reality;
• Divergence from reality then became a point of conflict;
• The points of conflict were argued about;
• Those in positions of power declared their faulty memory to be the standard, and those who were not in agreement were treated like failures;
• Blame for divergence from schedule or delivery promises was then directed towards “the failures,” and
• Everyone loses: product is late, the workforce is demoralized, management is angry, money is lost, quality is deprecated.

Short form: No one had a status board to point to and say Look! You see? That is what is going on! Regardless of which side of the management / worker or client / consultant fence you might sit, reality is much easier to address when you can actually see it.

A kanban (see image) is a status board. It shows who is working on what, which tasks come next for each group to pull from, and the rate at which work flows through the system. In addition to being a powerful project management tool, the kanban also decreases the animosity frustrating work can generate.

You see, the issues that slow production are rarely sabotage, subterfuge, or incompetence. Instead, they’re more likely due to lack of necessary information, conflicting expectations, hidden policies, and the intricacies of knowledge work. Seldom is it personal. But we personalize it nevertheless, because it’s all we have. We can’t make our tools work faster, so we yell at our people.

A visual control gives the team a gift: a disinterested third party that merely reports reality. The kanban becomes an interactive arbitrator. Our work is no longer the responsibility of one person. On the board it becomes an object (the sticky note) that everyone involved wants to move. The inability to move a sticky note becomes a shared responsibility, and is no longer personified by the last person holding the task.

In this way, the board depersonalizes work. Now, rather than yelling at each other, you can get together and yell at the stickies on the board.

Wait, that sounds pretty stupid.

If yelling at a sticky note seems stupid, why did it ever seem like a good idea to yell at your co-workers / employees / consultants? Did you think abusing them was going to spur them to greatness?

With the kanban, we can look at the work as it happens, discuss changes that need to be made, and work towards our release date with realistic expectations.

Image “Argument” by Fred Camino
Image of kanban by David Laribee

Slideshare currently hosts 3 of our Personal Kanban presentations. Combined, these slide decks have enjoyed approximately 30,000 views over the last year.

So on Friday, we will be doing an Intro to Personal Kanban Zipcast. This webinar will cover:

• What is Personal Kanban
• Why is it necessary
• What is existential overhead
• How to set up your first Personal Kanban
• What “pull” means
• Using Personal Kanban solo and with kids, family, and teams at work
• A few interesting design patterns

Don’t forget: Friday February 18th: 11am PT, 2pm ET please tune into our Zipcast page.

And be sure to check out the awesome lineup of people helping Slideshare launch their new product.

We’re looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.