I have written here about the importance of knowing your hypothesis of value. Without value there is no way to judge productivity. Without knowing productivity all you are left with is busyness or activity. Often the level of busyness is inversely related to productivity. It can be challenging to find and articulate value in a…

Now don't get me wrong. I plan and I estimate. But reality unfolding always has a way to humble me. It’s not that I was wrong to try to guess; I am wrong when I believe it too much and sometimes even use the prediction/plan/estimates to shield myself from reality based feedback. Recently, I was…

Trust can be the key to high performance like a fresh wind filling our sail or act as overhead that slows us down no matter how hard we try, like dragging an anchor. In my recent series of blog articles on how to use lean concepts for high performance teams, you may be thinking trust…

In my previous blog articles, I discussed how limiting the number and size of things we are working on (aka Limiting WIP) can dramatically increase our throughput. This kind of lean thinking leads organizations to huge increases in the ability to get things done. Then I suggested a way of thinking of productivity as getting…

In my previous blog article, I discussed the importance of scrum teams knowing the value in addition to just the size of what they are working on. While knowing the size helps sequence work to increase throughput, knowing the value helps the team increase its productivity. I suggest that value is an estimate and should…

To start with, I want to make a kind of very simple yet radical conjecture; I strongly believe a couple things; That Productivity is The Goal, and That productivity is delivering the most amount of value for the least amount of work. So mathematically; P = V / W I think this way because experience tells me…

In my last blog post, I discussed how stopping multitasking (aka single piece flow) can increase the throughput of deliveries. This by itself can in turn increase productivity; but only if the deliveries have value.  Later articles on Priority Setting and Value will focus there. Before that I want to discuss another way to increase…

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…

I previously wrote a post that discussed what technical debt is, how it comes to be, and some ideas about how to handle it. I recently came across a blog article written by Don Reinertsen. In this article, he looks at the Technical Debt metaphor and lays out some math to form an economic model…

I believe most of the words and metaphors used in Agile/XP/Scrum where chosen with great precision. So, often exploring those words is the key to understanding what the guiding principle is. Once you have the guiding principle you can apply it to the situation you are seeing. So back to points… Points drive Velocity so…