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.

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.

Last week, Eva Schiffer of Net-Map wrote me and said:

I have just erased my to do list and transformed it in something kanban-like. My own to do list format, that always worked well for me, had 4 categories:

Important and urgent
Important, less urgent
Less important, urgent
Less important, less urgent.

That helps me a lot because I normally love the less important, less urgent tasks, and while they often lead to really interesting creative outcomes, it is important for me to keep procrastination at bay and make sure that I don’t just impress myself with the number of tasks performed, but also do those things that are most urgent and/or important.

This got me thinking about the relationship between productivity and effectiveness. Eva recognized that simply increasing her throughput was not enough, that was mere mindless productivity.

What Eva was searching for was effectiveness.

At Modus, we do dynamic prioritization using a priority filter that looks like this:

For Tonianne and myself, this works wonders. We constantly have a short list of items that need doing, and as they move from 3 to 2 to 1 they become more important. However, prioritization is a contextual exercise that varies from moment to moment. As we can see here, “Eat all the chicken on earth” is Priority 2, but that could suddenly change to Priority 1 if suddenly I were in a place where all the chicken on earth was accessible.

Eva, like many organized people, uses a matrix to ascribe values of urgency and importance, which results in something like this:

Major Tom's Backlog

In the case of Major Tom, he has been sent into space to find out what’s there. He’s a celebrity and everyone is watching him. There are a variety of things he could be doing up there, but he has a a backlog that varies between levels of urgency and importance.

So for example, the papers want to know whose shirts he wears. That’s important both to his individual fame and to the space program in general because after all, it’s being good to the press. But at the moment, he’s in space so he can get to that later.

Major Tom's Workflow

If the press scores an interview while he’s up there, though, it can become relevant and therefore is something to complete.

So we reach Major Tom here in the middle of his work day. He’s already managed to tell his wife he loves her very much, and he’s stepped outside the capsule. He’s put his previously active conversation with ground control on hold because at the moment, he’s working on other things. And he’s now floating in a most peculiar way (and noticing how different the stars look).

Major Tom is still limiting his WIP and he’s still visualizing, even if his backlog is drawn as a matrix rather than columns. The matrix is a familiar organizational tool for him, and it should be preserved. (Although he probably should have checked his instruments.)

So Eva’s concern is very real – we stand a real risk of becoming mindless production units, grinding tasks out at hyper-speed without assessing their value. The key with Personal Kanban is to assess the value of what you are doing – however it is that you define value.

We’re all individuals – quality, value and growth are different for us all.

Not only that but quality, value and growth are also contextual. Today, home repair might be very low on your list. After a tornado, however, it’s probably going to be pretty high. Did you put it there? No. Life did. Context shifted. For that reason, just-in-time dynamic re-prioritization is key for workload management.

So be like Eva. Find the way you define your work – visualize it, and thoughtfully examine how you can best be effective.

Don’t strain your brain, paint a train
You’ll be singing’ in the rain…

- Blondie

Action over Words

Your brain is a muscle. As we repeat certain actions, our “muscle memory” becomes comfortable with those actions, and programs itself to anticipate them. As it trains itself to anticipate them, it optimizes for them. This is the basis of kaizen, continuous improvement. Your brain gets used to your workflow, it becomes an subconscious process, and so it looks for ways to do things better.

Smoother.

Faster.

You get sensitized to completion. Sensitized to waste.

So using Personal Kanban on a regular basis, through its visual and tactile interactions, sensitizes you to the building blocks of success.

Tell me and I forget.
Show me and I remember.
Let me do and I understand.

- Confucius

Simply put: your brain responds very well to doing. The active nature of Personal Kanban is what your brain wants. Confucius figured this out 1700 years ago.

Managing your workload with static lists, while they can help you organize, doesn’t have the same brain-training impact as having a visual tool like Personal Kanban. Lists don’t involve motor skills or elements of flow.

Lists merely “tell you.”

Personal Kanban both shows you, and lets you do.

Image by Rob Web

Modus Cooperandi is pleased to announce the release of its third Personal Kanban InfoPak. In Personal Kanban Design Patterns: Inspiration to Discover Your Flow we present a series of patterns for individuals as well as for small “teams.” Among the topics discussed: approaches tailored to specific users (i.e. children and authors) and situations (i.e. non-linear work); ways in which productivity tools such as GTD and Pomodoro extend the value of your Personal Kanban; how “coping mechanisms” such as retrospectives shed light on work patterns that have helped or hindered productivity in the past.

For best results and access to links, please download the presentation. As always, please feel free to embed, distribute, and/or comment on this or any of our other InfoPaks.

So why call it “personal” if I can use it with my family, in the classroom, or with a team at the office?

In life and in business, we create value.  For Personal Kanban, “personal”  relates to  personal value.  Personal Kanban tracks and visualizes items of personal value – tasks, work, and goals.

Industrial-style kanban – as it was conceptualized by Taiichi Ohno and notably implemented at Toyota – tracks industrial objects of value (tasks) as they travel thru a production stream that is often predictable. These objects have primary value to the organization. This model, while flexible, still tracks relatively well-defined objects through a relatively well-defined value stream. Tracking a crank case over its assembly process is markedly different from tracking the workflow of your upcoming move or your daughter’s wedding.

In contrast, “Personal Kanban” tracks items of personal value as they travel thru a less predictable path. These objects are often smaller and more varied.

In Personal Kanban, even when tracking the tasks of a team, the object of value – and by extension the resultant epiphany about the nature of that work – is still connected primarily to the individual.

Small teams work better when using a group Personal Kanban because such epiphanies are not only shared, but they can likewise be distributed. A realization that something can be improved does not have to be limited to your individual work.

Photo by Tonianne

Modus Cooperandi is pleased to announce the release of its second Personal Kanban InfoPak. In Personal Kanban 101: Achieving Focus & Clarity with Your First Personal Kanban we discuss the essentials for getting your board started. Topics addressed include how to establish value stream, backlog and WIP, and why there are only two hard rules to implementing this productivity tool.

As always, please feel free to download, distribute, comment and let us know what you think.

The basic kanban: Waiting, Working, Done

A quick trip through personal kanban design patterns demonstrates how they can be created using any number of materials. This tutorial illustrates how to build the most common personal kanban.

Step One: Establish Your Value Stream

Value Stream (vly strm): The flow of work from the moment you start to when it is finished. The most simple value stream possible is Backlog (work waiting to be done), Doing (work being done), and Done (yes, that’s right, work that’s done).  While you can set this up on a white board or even a piece of paper, a white board is preferable. Why? Because as you grow to better understand your value stream, you will want to change your kanban. You will add steps, or refine how you think about work. A white board provides permanence, yet allows ultimate flexibility: you can always erase and draw something new.

Step Two: Establish Your Backlog

Backlog (bklg, -lôg): The work you haven’t done yet. All that stuff you need to do that you haven’t done – that’s your backlog.  Everything you need to do, start writing it down onto Post-its. Big tasks, small tasks, get them all down. Write them onto post-its and start populating your backlog. Don’t sweep things under the rug. Don’t lie to yourself. Your first backlog-fest should be a painful experience. You should, at some point say, “god, there’s way too much of this.”

Step Three: Establish Your WIP Limit

WIP (hwp, wp): Work in Progress Limit – The amount of work you can handle at one time.  We have a tendency to leave many things half-done. Our brains hate this. Part of what makes kanban work is finding the sweet spot, where we are doing the optimal amount of work at the optimal speed. Set an arbitrary number in the beginning, let’s say no more than 5 things.  Add this number to your Doing column.

"Pull" tasks from one kanban stage to the next

Step Four: Begin to Pull

Pull (pl): To take completed work from one stage of the value stream and pull it into the next. You’re ready to go! That’s right – step four is Begin Working.

Beyond Step Four: Prioritize, Refine, and Reduce

Past step four, it’s all about prioritization of work, refinement of the value stream, and reduction of waste.

Work moves across a kanban

In the image to the right we see two work flows with work flowing through them.  The top part of the board shows three states: Backlog, Doing, and Done.  Tasks move across this simple workflow.

In a subtle way, this is doing three main things:

1. Showing us the work we have in progress
2. Showing us all the work we haven’t gotten to yet
3. Showing us how efficiently we work

That’s it! That’s all there is to a kanban physically.

For personal kanban, we take the simplicity of this system and use it to help us understand how we do what we do and how long it takes to do it. Simply having clarity around our workload is a tremendous psychological gift.