Are you on a team where tasks seem to get started but not finished? Does the daily standup involve updates where individuals work on what seems like the same handful of tasks for multiple days?
Here’s a technique you can try for limiting work-in-progress. Instead of identifying task ownership whereby team members write their name on multiple task cards, ask each to use a single PostIt note with their name on it. Each person gets only one note with his or her name on it. Let’s face it, even if you have more than one task in the “In Progress” column, you can only work on one at a time. The sticky note is to be placed on the task that is being worked on at that moment. The note is moved throughout the day when changing tasks.
Here are some benefits of this approach:
Token to help address too much WIP
- Only one task can be claimed by any individual.
- The team now sees exactly who is doing what work at any moment.
- The team sees which tasks that are “In Progress” but not being worked on.
- Knowing what each person is working on makes it safer for team members to begin work on idle tasks.
- By no longer staking your claim to a whole set of tasks, you invite more collective ownership of completing the team’s work.
In addition to simply putting your name on a single sticky note, you could also capture data about context switching with this simple method. Write the date on your token. For that day, put a tally mark on the note each time the token moves from one task to another.
By using the date and tally marks on the card, you can get a sense for how much context switching is happening throughout the day. Perhaps thrashing is an impediment for your team. Of course, if you switch tasks six times and 5 tasks are completed, you probably don’t have a problem. If you switch six times and nothing gets to “Done,” there may be an impediment’s root cause to search for. Collect the notes throughout the iteration and look for trends in the data.
I hope you find this technique useful. Feel free to comment on the post.