The increased collaboration required by DevOps can sometimes bring an unwelcome guest: meetings. An exchange of mutually critical information is essential, but a day crammed with back-to-back meetings results in time theft. Are you losing precious time trapped in meeting misery? Dashing from meeting to meeting allows sparse time for people to finish important work and contributes to low employee satisfaction and poor performance. Getting buy-in to change meeting madness is tricky – but it can be done! In this webinar, Dominica addresses the too-many-meetings problem and provides actionable takeaways to help you optimize your time. Come learn how to influence the boss and get buy-in to improve your team’s capacity to get real work done.

1. Calendars for Humans
How to Undo the All-day Cram
Dominica DeGrandis

2. Dominica DeGrandis
5Time Thieves
can’t should we Oh, btw still here

4. Dominica DeGrandis
@dominicad
Thief Too much Work-in-progress (WIP)TOO MUCH Work-in-Progress (WIP)

5. Why do you
take on more WIP
than you have capacity to do?

6. I like the person who asked?

7. I don’t want to let the team down

8. I’d rather start a shiny new thing than toil in
something unglamorous.
optimize for fun

9. Didn’t realize how big or complex the request was.

10. It’s hard to say “no,” to
the boss or to people we
like.
Who feels okay to refuse
a manager’s request?
#The boss asked me.

13. CONFLICTING PRIORITIES
@dominicad

14. Visualize Priorities Exercise
Instructions: Ensure those impacted have a voice in the discussion
Questions to discuss:
• What is your prioritization policy & how is it visualized?
• How is work signaled that it’s been prioritized and ready to be
worked on?
• How to people know what work to pull next?
• Where is your line of commitment?
• How do you visually distinguish between high & higher priorities?

15. Dominica DeGrandis
Thief Conflicting Priorities
Projects and tasks that compete with
each other.
Conflicting Priorities is a time thief b/c
people take on too much WIP when
priorities are unclear.
@dominicad
Line of commitment

16. Dominica DeGrandis
Thief Conflicting Priorities
Projects and tasks that compete with
each other.
Conflicting Priorities is a time thief b/c
people take on too much WIP when
priorities are unclear.
@dominicad

17. @dominicad

18. Attribution to CSRA Learning Teams: SparrowHawks: Kevin Kirkpatrick, John Kitson, Rupesh Vadrev, Timothy Payne, Justin Zsimovan

19. The all day cram
The 30 minute jam
The triple booked wham

20. The 30 minute jam
10 meetings a day - perpetual stop and go - exacerbates context
switching
@dominicad

21. Back-to-back 7am to 7pm meetings leave zero flexible time
§ no room for unexpected important urgent work
§ disappointed people
§ cancelled meetings (how often cancelled?)
§ How much time is wasted rescheduling meetings?
The all day cram

22. A canceled meeting creates rework – which has a cost
The triple booked wham
If the no-show person disagrees w/ decision
made by the others, then rework occurs to
rehash out that decision.

23. 3 Calendar Solutions
1. Maker calendar: Creative people (developers, designers,
writers)
2. Manager calendar: Decision makers
3. Combo calendar: People who do both
http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

24. Ultradiam cycles: brain naturally gets lull in concentration every 90 – 120 min when awake b/c brain wave frequencies rise,
then sink. https://www.polyphasicsociety.com/polyphasic-sleep/science/rhythms/
Maker calendar

25. Unstructured
time after
dept meetings
Manager calendar
Upper mgt is in a position to make everyone meet at their frequency.
But if they know ppl working for them need long chunks of time, they can arrange calendar to accommodate prime maker time
mgrs meet w/
other mgrs
during prime
maker time
Office
hours
Office
hoursOffice
hours

26. @dominicad
Office hours
A regular cadence of office
hours signals times when
people can schedule time on
your calendar, or drop by for
important discussions.

27. Combo calendar - before

28. Combo calendar - after
D1 D1
D1
D1Pomodoro
time
DND

29. Pomodoros
Break down work into
time-boxed intervals
separated by short
breaks.
Set timer for 25 or 30
min and work to finish
your task until timer
rings.
Pomodoros provide
intense focus time.

30. Do-not-disturb hours
Set a regular cadence to let
people know when you are
available and when you are
not available.

31. “But that won’t work here.”

32. Measure at least one metric trend in 4 different areas.
§ How fast
§ How productive
§ How good
§ How predictable
How to Influence Others
Inspired by Larry Maccherone/Troy Magennis, “Doing Team Metrics Right,” http://focusedobjective.com/team-metrics-right/.

33. MATERIALS:
§ Blank balanced flowchart
§ Data spreadsheet
Balanced Flowchart Exercise
www.ddegrandis.com

34. @dominicad
Look at Flow time
Balanced Flow chart exercise – How Fast?
www.ddegrandis.com.co

35. Consider the
90th
percentile to
discuss the
probability of
finishing work
within so
many days.
90th percentile filtered
on business requests
Balanced Flow chart exercise – How predictable?
www.ddegrandis.com

36. “But that won’t work here.”

37. “The difference between
successful people and
very successful people
is that very successful
people say “no” to
almost everything.”
~Warren Buffett
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/756.Warren_Buffett

38. Dominica DeGrandis
The problem is that we don’t protect our hours from being stolen.
We allow thieves to steal time from us, day after day after day.
@dominicad

39. Email: dominica@SendYourSlides.com
Subject: flow
To receive:
• copy of this presentation deck
• Videos of all my talks
• 73 pg excerpt of Making Work Visible
• 45 min excerpt of Making Work Visible audiobook
• Balanced Flow Chart exercise
• Tasktop article on tool integration