The document discusses the concept of "flow" or being fully immersed in an activity. It provides characteristics of flow including clear goals, strong concentration, intrinsic reward, loss of self-consciousness and time distortion. The document then discusses how teams and organizations can achieve flow through optimizing their processes to reduce bottlenecks and wait times, using techniques like Scrum of Scrums and PI planning. Key aspects that can disrupt flow are discussed, like fractionalized work and excessive work in progress. The document emphasizes the need for intentional design of work systems and value streams to achieve organizational flow at scale.

1. FLOW, THE UNIVERSE
& EVERYTHING
Clint Edmonson
Polaris Solutions
clint@polaris.llc

3. Have you ever been in a state of flow?

4. A state of complete immersion in an activity.

5. Completely involved in an activity for its own sake.

6. The ego falls away.
Time flies.
Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the
previous one, like playing jazz.
Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the
utmost.

7. Flow is an optimal psychological state
that people experience
when engaged in an activity that is
appropriately challenging to one’s skill
level,
often resulting in immersion and
concentrated focus on a task.
This can result in deep learning and high
levels of personal and work satisfaction.
Mihály Csíkszentmihályi

8. Experiencing Flow
1. Clear goals that, while challenging, are still attainable
2. Strong concentration and focused attention
3. The activity is intrinsically rewarding
4. Feelings of serenity; a loss of feelings of self-consciousness
5. Timelessness; a distorted sense of time; feeling so focused on the present that you lose
track of time passing
6. Immediate feedback
7. Knowing that the task is doable; a balance between skill level and the challenge
presented
8. Feelings of personal control over the situation and the outcome
9. Lack of awareness of physical needs
10. Complete focus on the activity itself

9. How to (or not) achieve Flow

10. Can a team achieve a state of flow?

11. Determine the achievable throughput of a
stream
?
Theory of Constraints analysis tells us the limits of our teams

12. Variations in Individual Performance or Dedication
Dramatically Affect Throughput
5 2
7
105
8
3 ?
Optimizing individual utilization will amplify variance and unpredictability.
Transitions & handoffs
have a cost too!
Our tools can tell us
cycle times and
handoff delays!
We have to optimize for the whole system, not individual performance.

13. LEAN DEVELOPMENT VALUE STREAM
New Grooming Development Testing Acceptance Deployed
• PBI
achieved
• Changes
released
to PROD
or in
state to
be
deployed
at will
• Description
clarified
• Acceptance
criteria written
• Estimated by
team
• Acceptance
criteria met
• Unit tests pass
• Code reviewed
• Code quality
gates met
• Integrated into
main
development
stream
• Integration
tests pass
• Acceptance
test pass
• Automated
Functional
tests written
and pass
• Non-functional
requirements
met/tests pass
• PBI Demo’d to
product owner
who accepts/
signs off on
story

14. Value Delivered
CUMULATIVE VALUE FLOW
Shows stream of value delivery

15. Enemies of Flow…
• Fractionalized employees focusing on survival
• Excessive work in progress & context
switching
• Bottlenecks around specialists
• Emphasis on maximizing resource utilization
over value delivery and outcomes
• Lack of test and deployment automation
• Lack of ownership and accountability
• LACK OF FOCUS!
Direct Quotes:
“I’m / we’re waiting on ….” bottlenecks
“I’m not sure where the story is at”
“I’m not sure what this story means”
“I didn’t make any progress on this project”
“I don’t remember what I worked on
yesterday”

16. Can an entire organization achieve a state of flow?

17. Sequencing and allocation
become increasingly complex.
You will reach a terminal limit!

18. Yes, but it requires intentional design…
A system must be managed. It will not
manage itself.
Left to themselves, components become
selfish, independent profit centers and thus
destroy the system…
—W. Edwards Deming

19. What do grocery carts and IT projects have in common?

21. PM Arch QA Ops
Team B
Team A
…
Governance

22. PMO Arch QA Ops
Group 1
Group 2
…
Alpha Team
Beta Team
Gamma Team
Delta Team
Governance
W
O
R
K
S
T
R
E
A
M
S
Epsilon Team
… Team
… Team
Sprints
Sprints
Kanban

25. Remember Little’s Law
• Faster processing time decreases wait
• Shorter queue lengths decreases wait
• Control wait times by controlling queue
lengths
• Shorter wait times = more throughput
W =
L
λ
Wait time is equal to length of queue
divided by processing speed

26. Scaling techniques that work!
• Scrum of scrums
• PI planning
• Scrumban

27. Organization design to achieve flow
• Organize around value stream driven teams
• E.g. think Microsoft Office (word, excel, powerpoint, outlook)
• Find an optimal mix of scrum & Kanban that accelerates system
flow
• Optimize & standardize where it make sense to achieve
economies of scale
• E.g. front checkout vs pharmacy vs electronics

28. Are you scaled…or scalable?
28

29. Coach until the process becomes baked in…
and then coach some more!

30. How does this strike you?
Hey Clint,
Quick question. How can export the entire backlog to Excel?
Thanks,
JW

31. How about this one?
Hi Clint,
As you know, we have a significant breakdown in communication. Abe and Jack do not
communicate.
So with that said I talked with Bob yesterday about reviewing our weekly schedule to force
communication across the teams and specifically on ABCD progress.
I proposed we consolidate to Friday standups for the entire ABCD group.
Overall I think we can reduce standups and improve communication in my opinion.
Thanks,
SB

32. Watch out for the saboteurs!
Influential team members who aren’t bought in
Old school PMs who want to manage to a Gantt chart
• Where do I put the due dates?
Seagull leaders
• Distractions & side quests!

33. Case studies…

35. How are these
teams performing?
What about relative
to each other?

38. Some great collective
wisdom in here as
well!

39. Thank You!
Clint Edmonson
Polaris Solutions
clint@polaris.llc