The courage to stop (The discipline of focus)
In most organisations, “starting” is rewarded. Moving papers from one place to another, feeling busy, always doing something, feels like progress. Multi-tasking feels more than busy - even more celebrated.
But starting is easy. Finishing is hard.
For this, we can use what is called WIP limits.
What is WIP?
WIP, or Work in Progress, is a number of tasks that a team comes up with in order to not surpass it. This forces the team members to finish a task before taking another one. Like you cannot fill in a bottle more than its volume. You have to drink from it, first.
How is it used?
A WIP is set by the team at the beginning of setting up the rules of working together, or the kick-off meeting. The team members agree to the idea that no one will start a new subject without finishing one that will lead them to have more items started than the limit.
A simple example is the number of user stories a single team member can have “In progress” at one point in time. If the limit is met or exceeded, the team members with available time must shift gears in order to help the rest of the team complete what is already in progress.
The importance of WIP limits
WIP limits regulate the number of items on going at any point in time within a team - we have agreed on that. Implementing WIP limits offers several benefits:
Enhanced focus: By limiting the subjects you have started at the same time, you limit shifting attention. By limiting shifting attention, you can fully concentrate on the subject at hand - and your brain will thank you for it. We’re not built to multitask.
Reduced bottlenecks: When you have limits that are respected, bottlenecks become hard to ignore. Implementing WIP limits can help you identify and address bottlenecks because your workflow is more streamlined.
Improved quality: Focusing on fewer items at the same time (even 1 per person, in an ideal world) allows the team to fully focus on one subject at a time. This leads to a better, higher quality at the end.
Increased efficiency: Teams can finish items faster if they attack them one by one, instead of finishing two or more at the same time. This leads to finishing the same amount of tasks in smaller periods of time, due to avoiding swithing attention, therefore being more efficient for each task at hand
Actionable TIP: Before your team pulls a new tickets from the “To do” column today, they must move an existing ticket to “Done”. It’s as simple as that. If nothing can be moved today to “Done”, the team must
If nothing can be moved today to “done” because of a blocker, the team must stop
Do not “start something else” just to look busy. Try one of the things:
Swarm: Can you help a team mate move THEIR ticket to Done?
Escalate: Spend the hour calling the client or fixing the process that cause the blocker
Clean up the technical debt that’s been slowing you down for months
The courage to stop: It takes zero effort to start a new task. It takes so much professional courage to stand in front of a stakeholder or a manager and say: “We aren’t starting your request yet because we haven’t finished what we started yet.”
