Your Specification Is Highly GeneralGive your people effective and minimal boundaries
Mon, 07/21/2014 - 16:54
Years ago, William Rowden and I owned a business. In that business we wanted to build amazing software for our clients, and we adopted several practices to help us do this.
One of the central practices we employed was test-driven development—a… Fearful Features: Making Risk ExplicitTell me, Clarice, are the features still screaming?
Tue, 06/24/2014 - 11:56
Sometimes work is terrifying. We’re asked to do something that we know, or at least strongly suspect, won’t work. Maybe we’re asked to do several things, some of which are are simple, but one or two make us uncomfortable. We might even place a hard… Is Your Project in Limbo?There’s no need for purgatory and blame
Wed, 05/14/2014 - 10:55
What happens when we start a project and it is honestly overtaken by events?
We start a project in good faith, and then, because context changes, we have to set it aside. It’s work-in-progress, so what do we do? The project isn’t done; we will… Clean Up the Done ColumnNot everything needs to be discussed
Tue, 03/04/2014 - 17:31
How do you know when to clean up your kanban’s Done column? When it’s full.
When we showed our board to people in classes and on consulting engagements, the Done column showed that we were really, really productive. It was huge. It went on forever… Finishing Feels GoodThree tips for keeping goals manageable
Fri, 02/28/2014 - 11:28
Yes, finishing feels good. When we complete tasks, we feel better than when we have a pile of incompletes just lying around. Incompletion creeps up on us, overloads us, and crushes us. The more we fail to complete our work or realize our goals, the… Dominant and Secondary ProjectsThe straightest path between project completion and value is focus
Mon, 02/24/2014 - 09:56
At Modus we now have a posted, dominant project at all times. We post it as a large sticky note on the wall. This is the banner saying, “If you pull something and have any choice whatsoever, pull it from this backlog.”
This giant kanban token… Kanban HygieneClean up your backlog
Mon, 02/10/2014 - 10:46
Does your kanban Ready column look like a junk drawer? Do you have tasks in the Ready column from six months ago that say “Urgent!” (and have since the day they were created)? Guess what? You’re learning something about your work.
We have a lot of… Categorizing Your Kanban BacklogStop completing tasks and start completing projects
Tue, 02/04/2014 - 17:54
Your backlog is hope. Your backlog is pain. Your backlog holds all the projects, tasks, demands, desires, and expectations that you and the world have for you. The problem is, today’s apparent emergencies are tomorrow’s waste of time.
If we are… You Can Better Manage What You Can SeeHow to visualize knowledge work in process
Mon, 01/27/2014 - 13:05
‘Those people in IT, I don’t know why we have them around.” Richard, a department head for a major healthcare firm, stared at me across the table. “They have projects that are six months late! Projects they told us would take only a few months to… Are You Just Doing Things?Focus on your backlog
Tue, 01/07/2014 - 11:38
I’ll bet you have a lot of things to do. Of course you do. We all do. A personal kanban anti-pattern I’m seeing is that people are filling their kanbans with things to do, and then... doing them. They are becoming productivity machines. And that’s…
