There are two key concepts in Lean/Agile that can lead to a three or more times increase in productivity. They are limiting work in progress(aka WIP) and focus. As an Agilist, I often measures productivity by the ratio of value to work that can be delivered. This is not the amount of activity or busyness. In fact, lean especially teaches us that high levels of activity or busyness can prevent productivity by lowering the throughput (See the seven forms of waste).

As an Agile Coach I demonstrate the value of focus and limiting WIP using 2 games that results in a high impact. This article focuses on focus.

The first game is a simple example of how throughput of the same size work degrades when we multitask. This is a simple game where pairs of people (one a timer and one a worker). The pair performs a task to exactly reproduce a diagram (as below) handed to them as quickly and accuracy as possible.

A I 1
B II 2
C III 3
D IV 4
E V 5
F VI 6
G VII 7
H VIII 8
I IX 9
J X 10

Although some do better than others; even the best multitaskers improve their time by just about the same ratio when allowed to focus. For most people in this demo experience an improvement of about 3 to 1. In other words, most people complete the same work in a third of the time is they are allowed to focus on one thing at a time.

Questions to think about;

  1. When you were multitasking did you make more errors? Did you feel more stressed? Did you feel like there was more activity/motion or more busy?
  2. Do you multitask? Do you accept that you have to? What can you do to reduce multitasking?
  3. Do you make other people multitask? Do we want people to get things done or to be busy?
  4. Imagine that the 3 tasks in the game are requested by 3 people. Do you agree that all 3 would wait less if you did one at a time? As a requester is it more important to know someone has started or wait longer to be done.

Scrum in an example of an Agile Framework that embodies focus. Rather than the team getting priories from 8 managers (like in that movie Office Space), the scrum team is 100% dedicated and has one person that sets priority (The Product Owner) and a clear set of priorities 1-N.

Interestingly, despite the focus you get if the framework is followed, many scrum teams work on more than one story at a time. Why does that happen? How can the pressure to do that be lessened?

Thoughts?

 

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