Secrets of Flow, Episode 7 - Dec 10, 2024: How Long Will It Take?

We explored variation of time in intellectual work, its impact on customers and business, how to forecast and how to improve.

00:00 Start
02:28 Your work is a lot less predictable than the duration of this episode
03:09 Two broad classes of deliverables, different approaches to "how long will it take?"
04:20 Projects and batches, visualizing flow
07:02 This pattern occurs in product development with continuous delivery, don't hate batches
08:46 The biggest uncertainty is the number of work items, with and without scope creep
11:02 Single work items (sorry I forgot to switch to the screen to show the process/visual board sketch; instead, link in the 1st comment)
13:00 The biggest uncertainty is sources of delay
14:53 Looking at time-in-process data
16:19 Feeling unpredictability intuitively, expectations primed and frustrated
18:09 Breakdown of metrics by work item type
19:58 Pro tip: identify work item types via demand analysis before process mapping, not months later by looking for patterns in mixed data sets
21:32 Don't expect variability to go away (this data set is already filtered down to one work item type)
22:00 Delivery manager analyzed data and figured something out
24:19 Orange items affected by external dependency, probability 30%, average delay 11 days, more in the worst case
26:02 What can we do about it? (by this delivery manager)
28:00 The shared service manager can help, too
30:51 How can we uncover such insights?
32:29 By remembering what business we're in, how execution in this business relies on certain types of expertise
35:59 Process map gives lots of clues, too
38:07 Summarizing advice, team leaders 1st
39:38 shared service delivery managers
41:25 senior management
43:45 Single-work items vs batches: master managing flow for single work items first
48:53 Expertise becomes commodity over time, but you push the envelope and a dependency on a new type/level of expertise emerges
51:40 Community announcement
52:30 Future plans
53:44 End

This was the last full episode this year. The December 17 episode will be half-length, then breaking for 3 weeks for holidays.

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