An item can spend days ‘in progress’ while nobody is actively working on it.
Someone has started it. Everyone involved is busy. Yet the item is waiting for an answer, a review or its turn in somebody else’s queue.
If we want to understand why delivery takes so long, we need to notice the gaps between the work.
Continue reading The hidden life of agile work: most delays happen while nobody is working on the itemOn Tuesday, we looked at a simple idea: a new Sprint does not erase the history of work already in progress.
So what can that history tell us?
Velocity shows how much estimated work a team completed in previous Sprints. Throughput counts the items completed over a period. Both tell us about finished work, but neither tells us how long a particular unfinished item has been in progress or has been waiting.
Continue reading What the age of unfinished work can tell usA Sprint gives a team a useful rhythm. At its end, we inspect what we have achieved and plan what comes next.
But unfinished work does not become new work just because a new Sprint has begun. It carries its history with it.
Continue reading The Sprint ends, but the work’s history does not disappearAgile teams can fall into a trap that looks productive from the outside.
Everyone is busy.
Everyone has work.
Everyone is occupied all day.
But busyness is not flow.
Flow is not about making sure every person is fully utilised. It is about helping valuable work move through the system smoothly, with as little delay, friction and interruption as possible.
These are not the same thing.
Continue reading Busyness is not flowMost productivity advice treats capture like a filing exercise. Get ideas out of your head, put them somewhere ‘safe’, then sort them later.
That is useful, but it misses what is actually happening inside you.
Capture works because it externalises anxiety, not information.
Continue reading Capture works because it externalises anxiety, not information
