Tag: work in progress

When slowing a team down increased delivery

One of the most important agile lessons I have learned is that speed does not always come from going faster.

Sometimes it comes from slowing the system down.

I saw this in a Scrum team that was struggling to finish work. On paper, we looked reasonably disciplined. We were following Scrum well enough. We had two-week sprints, like other teams in the organisation. But our delivery told a different story.

When I checked the Jira data, our cycle time for backlog items ranged from one day to 35 days.

That meant some work was taking up to seven weeks to get through the system.

For a team working in two-week sprints, that was a warning sign.

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Busyness is not flow

Agile 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.

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When ‘keeping people busy’ feels safer than finishing work

One question I’ve heard repeatedly from managers moving towards agile ways of working is this:

“But what happens if someone finishes their task early?”

On the surface, it sounds like a practical concern.
Underneath, it’s often something else entirely.

What’s really being expressed is anxiety about visibility, value and safety in an uncertain system.

Over time, I’ve come to see this as a clash between two different value systems.

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