Visual work management in product development. What are the benefits of visual work management and why it's essential for accelerating project delivery.

1. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Visual Work Management
PLAYBOOK LEAN PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT SERIES
PLAYBOOKHQ.co
@PLAYBOOKHQ

2. PLAYBOOK LEAN PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT SERIES
This series is for anyone interested in Lean, Agile and team principles
and how they can be applied in new product development scenarios
to increase innovation, improve delivery times and create engaged,
happy, high-performing teams.
PLAYBOOKHQ.co
@PLAYBOOKHQ

3. Notes:
1. What is the fastest way to increase throughput of a system?
a. Remove the _______________ on the _______________ .
2. How can you find the bottleneck in Manufacturing?
a. _________________________________________________________________
3. How can you find the bottleneck in a project?
a. Make the work _______________ !

4. Notes:
1. Work is visible.
2. Queues are visible.
3. Resource loading is visible and dynamically updates as Work is added/removed.
4. Increases in task durations are immediately visible in the Gantt view.
5. Promotes a Pull system behavior.
6. Promotes distributed ownership and planning by the team members.
7. And much more…

5. Notes:
1. The probability of communicating at least once a week decreases rapidly the further
people are physically separated.
2. When people are approximately 10 meters (~33 ft) apart, there’s about a 10% chance
they’ll communicate once a week. Is this true in your workplace?
3. Co-located teams benefit from face-to-face interactions that build team relationships,
improve communication, and increase productivity.
4. Co-located teams focus more attention on design quality, reducing errors and
improving the project’s outcomes.
5. However, co-located teams in the form of all team members working together in the
same room for the entire duration of a project is not always practical or feasible. Can
you name a couple of reasons why?
_____________________________________________________________________.

6. Notes:
1. Source: First Things First: To Live, to Love, to Learn, to Leave a Legacy by Stephen
Covey, A. Roger Merrill, Rebecca R. Merrill.
2. In the four quadrants activities are classified as Urgent and Not Urgent on the x-axis,
and Important or Not Important on the y-axis.
a. Quadrant 1 – Firefighting
b. Quadrant 2 – Quality Time, Exercise, Vocation
c. Quadrant 3 – Distractions, Interruptions
d. Quadrant 4 – Time Wasters, Busy Work
3. Quadrant 2 contains items that are non-urgent but important. These are the activities
we are likely to neglect, however we should focus on these more to be truly effective.
4. Typically too much time is spent in Quadrant 1 and not enough time is spent in
Quadrant 2. Do you feel like you spend too much time in firefighting mode and not
enough focused time getting things done?
5. Spending more time in Quadrant 2 can reduce time spent in the other quadrants. Can
you think of an example? _________________________________________________.
6. Planning may be the best example of important, value-added activity that typically
lacks urgency, yet its well worth the time invested.

7. Notes:
1. Daily Huddles
a. Smaller Information Batches
b. Shorter Feedback Cycles (Faster Learning)
2. Weekly Meetings
a. Larger Information Batches
b. Longer Feedback Cycles (Delayed Learning)

8. Notes:
1. Between each play players are briefed on their priorities and how individual
assignments fit with the rest of the team.
2. Huddles keep players motivated and focused on their priorities. They understand what
and why, every play, every day.
3. What does a Huddle look like? Each morning project teams have a 15 minute standup
meeting to review today’s project plan, identify blockages, synchronize handoffs,
minimize multitasking, monitor resource loading, and to ensure everyone’s priorities
are clear for the day.
4. Huddles are owned by the team, not the Project Manager. Typically, core team
members take turns running the Huddle; quarterback of the day.
5. Everyone is expected to help keep them running as intended to ensure their
effectiveness and to maximize their value.
6. Everyone will be trained on the Huddle protocol and guidelines and will take turns
running Huddles as part of the implementation.

9. Notes:
1. The Huddle is intended to review today’s project plan, identify blockages, synchronize
handoffs, minimize multitasking, monitor resource loading, and to ensure everyone’s
priorities are clear for the day.
2. Detailed discussions on task status or technical details should be held after the Huddle.
Some teams record these on stickys or on a whiteboard as they come up during the
Huddle to ensure follow-up and closure (i.e. they don’t fall in the cracks).
3. Using the word “late” strongly influences people’s behavior. Its better to ask, “What’s
causing this task to take longer than expected. Are you blocked?” For a detailed
explanation, see the Critical Chain Project Management class. Besides, pointing
fingers, doesn’t promote a strong team spirit.

10. Notes:
1. Yes, plans change, and they’re often wrong. Teams often respond to this by going to
one of two extremes:
a. They do little to no planning at all…
b. OR…
c. They overplan and become convinced the plan is an accurate depiction of what will
actually happen.
2. The teams that do little to no planning cannot answer the most basic questions, e.g.:
a. “When will you be done?”
b. “What resources will you need and when will you need them?”
3. Teams that overplan can trick themselves into thinking that the plan is right. Their plan
may be more thorough, but that does not necessarily mean it will be more accurate or
useful.

11. Notes:
1. If estimating and planning are difficult, why do it at all?
2. Planning is not just about determining an appropriate deadline or schedule. The value is
in the process of planning itself.
a. Planning gives us a common understanding of what needs to be done, when, and
who will do it.
b. Plans help us understand and manage resource demands.
c. Plans help us know if a project is on track.
d. Plans guide investment decisions.
3. Planning gives us a process to better prepare for what might happen and to quickly
adapt to changes as they happen. Whether talking football, military battle, or product
development, there’s one thing you can always count on and that is things will change.
4. To this end…
a. Plans are updated weekly
b. by those doing the work (not just the project leader)
c. to ensure the near-term plan is accurate to the best of everyone’s knowledge
d. and fleshed out in adequate detail so that you can have higher confidence.
5. Planning is a skill. Many people have little experience planning. So, how do we become
better at planning? _______________ .

12. Notes:
1. A good plan is one that the stakeholders find credible enough that they can use it as
the basis for decision-making.
a. Early in a project this might mean the plan predicts the product can be released in
the third quarter and that it will contain a certain set of features.
b. Later in the project the plan will need to be more precise and expectations
adjusted accordingly.
2. Plans are useful as long as they are somewhat predictive of what actually happens on
the project.
a. If development takes 12 months instead of the planned 6 months, it was not a
good plan.
b. If the project takes 7 months instead of the planned 6 months, the plan was
probably useful.
3. Plans should be updated weekly to plan the near future in more detail.
a. This is also know as sprint-planning or rolling-wave planning.
b. If the plan is updated frequently throughout a project, something that causes a 1
month delay should not be a last minute surprise to anyone.

13. Notes:
1. 100% schedule accuracy is ____________________ .
2. More ____________________ in tasks is not necessarily better. It is better that the
schedule is easy to manage, review, and use.
3. General Rule - Think long enough about the tasks to get a ____________________
accurate estimate of task duration. Anything more isn’t worth the investment of the
extra time.
4. An appropriate amount of time spent estimating and planning is a function of the length
of the project.
5. Use ____________________ planning to plan the ____________________ future in
more detail, and the ____________________ future in less detail, where near future is
1-2 months max.
6. For example, on a 6 month project…
a. Initial time planning = 0.04 (weeks to plan/weeks to execute) * 26 wks to execute
~ 5 full days (per person on average) to plan a 6 month project
b. Time updating and revising plan weekly = 0.04 (hrs to plan/hrs to execute) *
40 hrs to execute
i.
~ 1.6 hrs/week min.
ii.
~ 20 min/day min.

14. Notes:
1. Correct priorities refers to knowing which of your daily tasks will consume the least
amount of buffer (i.e. minimize the risk of extending your project schedule).
2. Without a plan, how would you know which tasks are higher priority than other tasks?
3. If you didn’t have a plan, let’s assume you selected tasks 1, 2, 3 and 5 to work on as a
“weekly priority”. What might happen to your project schedule as a result?
___________________________________________________________________.

15. Notes:
1. Choose correctly and you’ll likely not consume any project buffer or delay the schedule.
2. Choose incorrectly and you could very well consume some project buffer or delay the
schedule.

16. Notes:

17. Notes:

18. Notes:
1. You’ve heard it before, so can you commit to investing the time?

19. THANK YOU!
PLAYBOOKHQ.co
@PLAYBOOKHQ
PLAYBOOKHQ.co
@PLAYBOOKHQ