Tame the Flow
Tame the Flow
Hyper-Productive Knowledge-Work Management
About the Book
NOTE: An extended and revised edition of this book is available through J. Ross Publishing under the title of "Hyper-Productive Knowledge Work Performance, The TameFlow Approach and Its Application to Scrum and Kanban"
About the Authors
Table of Contents
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- The Book’s Blog
- Credits
- Acknowledgments
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About the Authors
- Steve Tendon
- Wolfram Müller
- Disclaimer
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Introduction
- Who Should Read this Book, and Why
- Structure of this Book
- How to Read this Book
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I What and Why
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1 A Case of Software Hyper-Productivity
- 1.1 The Case of Borland Quattro Pro for Windows
- 1.2 Most Productive Ever and Precursor to Scrum and XP
- 1.3 Barbarians, not Burrocrats!
- 1.4 Organizational Culture
- 1.5 Losing Hyper-productivity
- 1.6 Software Hyper-Productivity is Transferable
- 1.7 The Borland Portfolio
- 1.8 Possible and Transferable, but not Duplicable
- 1.9 Why Care?
- 1.10 So how do you get there?
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2 Shapes and Patterns of Hyper-Productivity
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2.1 Natural Force-based Social Networks (Adjacency Diagrams)
- The Adjacency Diagrams of Quattro Pro for Windows
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2.2 Interaction Grids
- The Interaction Grid of Quattro Pro for Windows
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2.3 Other Metrics
- Connectedness
- Communication Saturation
- Communication Intensity Ratio
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2.4 From Shapes to Patterns
- Identifying Patterns of Communication and Organization
- Hyper-productive Patterns
- 2.5 The Powerful Generative Nature of Patterns
- 2.6 The Prevalence of Structure and Values over Process
- 2.7 Early Signs of Scrum
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2.8 Scrum as Prepackaged Patterns
- Scrum’s Rediscovery of Patterns
- Scrumbuts, Blue Pills and Red Pills
- Scrum does Not Lead to Hyper-Productivity
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2.1 Natural Force-based Social Networks (Adjacency Diagrams)
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3 Patterns and Pattern Languages
- 3.1 What Patterns are Not
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3.2 Alexandrian Patterns
- Introduction to Alexandrian Patterns
- More about Alexandrian Patterns
- 3.3 Patterns are a Form of Knowledge
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3.4 The Connection between Organizational Patterns for Software Development and Organizational Design
- Relevance and Applicability of Patterns to Organizational Design
- Pattern Languages are Means of Expression of Organizational Design
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3.5 How Patterns become a Pattern Language
- Pattern Collection and Qualification
- Pattern Language Development
- 3.6 The Generative Power of Patterns and Pattern Languages
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3.7 Pattern Language Validation
- Coherence
- Completeness
- 3.8 Patterns of Hyper-Productivity
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3.9 Two Noble Patterns of Hyper-Productivity
- The Unity of Purpose Pattern
- The Community of Trust Pattern
- 3.10 Why All This?
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1 A Case of Software Hyper-Productivity
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II Management, Leadership and Organization
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4 The Nature of Knowledge Work
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4.1 From Rationalism to Empiricism
- Uncertainty, Incompleteness and Wegner’s Lemma
- 4.2 Rationale for Empiricism in Software Methods and Knowledge Work
- 4.3 Empiricism in Strategic Management
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4.1 From Rationalism to Empiricism
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5 Management’s Profound Understanding of Knowledge Work
- 5.1 Profound Understanding of the Fundamental Process
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5.2 The Wicked Problem of Strategy Making
- Coping with Wicked Problems
- Empiricism at the Heart of Strategy Making
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5.3 Capital Goods and Social Learning Processes
- Knowledge about Product and about Process
- 5.4 Strategy Making, Artful Making and Software Development
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6 Management’s Responsibility and Learning Organization
- 6.1 Process Innovation and Double-Loop Learning
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6.2 The Executive’s Achilles’ Heel
- Dealing with Failure
- Defensive Reasoning
- Change has to Start at the Top
- 6.3 Promoting Openness and Dialog
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7 Discovery Driven Planning
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7.1 A Latent Conflict
- Buy or Create Knowledge
- Management’s Conflict: Plan or Experiment?
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7.2 The Discovery Driven Planning Approach
- A Disciplined Approach
- Counting the Beans Backwards
- Tolerance for Failure
- Assumptions are Constantly Checked and Re-checked
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7.1 A Latent Conflict
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8 Budgets Considered Harmful
- 8.1 Beyond Budgeting
- 8.2 Beyond Budgeting is Attuned to the Empirical Approach
- 8.3 Beyond Budgeting Supports the Noble Patterns
- 8.4 A Note on The Lean Startup Perspective
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9 The Incremental Funding Method
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- IFM is based on Discounted Cash Flow Techniques
- Minimum Marketable Features
- Sequence Adjusted Net Present Value
- Financially Driven Requirements Prioritization
- Risk and Time Control
- Project Monitoring
- Development and Delivery Precursors
- Concurrent Development
- Architecture
- Architectural Dependencies
- Incremental Architecture
- Financially Sustainable Architecture
- Investment Appraisal with the Incremental Funding Method
- Determining Value
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9.1 Risk Management in the IFM
- Caveats when Combining IFM and Agile
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10 Throughput Accounting
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- Throughput Accounting vs. Cost Accounting
- Cost Accounting is not for Management Decisions
- Throughput Accounting can be Reconciled with Cost Accounting
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10.1 Throughput Accounting for Software Engineering
- Example: Decrease Operating Expense by Avoiding Feature Creep
- Example: Decrease Investment and Operating Expense with Open-Source Software
- Example: Increase Throughput by Targeting the Long Tail
- Considerations on Combining the Examples
- 10.2 Software Production Metrics in Throughput Accounting
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10.3 Throughput Accounting’s Effects on Delivery
- Throughput Accounting’s Effects on Other Common Processes
- 10.4 Conclusions
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11 The Thinking Processes
- 11.1 Current Reality Tree and Relevant Problem
- 11.2 Undesirable Effects and Root Causes
- 11.3 Span of Control and Sphere of Influence
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11.4 People Factors and Change Management
- Categories of Legitimate Reservation
- Policy Constraints
- The Layers of Resistance
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12 Creating a Shared Vision at the Team Level
- 12.1 The Problem: True Team Work is Difficult to Achieve in a Business Setting
- 12.2 A Daring Solution: Jim McCarthy’s Core Protocols
- 12.3 The Core Commitments
- 12.4 The Core Protocols
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12.5 Checking In
- The Check In Protocol
- The Check Out Protocol
- The Pass Protocol
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12.6 Deciding
- Resolution Protocol
- Decision Making as the Key Team Building Process
- Ecology of Ideas
- Protocol Check and Intention Check
- 12.7 Aligning
- 12.8 Envisioning
- 12.9 Validity and Caveats
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13 Critical Roles, Leadership and More
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- The Patron Role
- Play by the Rules of the Game
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13.1 Lessons from Open Source Projects
- The Power and Consequences of Forkability
- The Power and Consequences of Community
- The Open Source Governance Model
- 13.2 The Thinking Processes of the Theory of Constraint Foster Unanimity
- 13.3 A Counterproductive Role: the Scrum Master
- 13.4 The Solitary Programmer
- 13.5 Leader is Part of Team
- 13.6 Pride, Fun, and Slack
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4 The Nature of Knowledge Work
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III In Practice with the Kanban Method
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14 Herbie and Kanban
- 14.1 The Story of Herbie
- 14.2 Herbie and Work in Process
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14.3 The Five Focusing Steps
- Step 1: Identify the Constraint — “Herbie!”
- Step 2: Exploit the Constraint — “C’mon Herbie! Speed up!”
- Step 3: Subordinate to the Constraint — “Everybody stays behind Herbie!”
- Step 4: Elevate the Constraint — “Everybody carries a piece of Herbie’s gear!”
- Step 5: Repeat!
- The Unstated Step 0
- The Secret Step 6
- 14.4 From Stepping Stones to the Kanban Board
- 14.5 A Philosophy of Ongoing Improvement
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15 Unity of Purpose and Community of Trust
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15.1 Problem: Conflicting Metrics and Incentives
- Decision Making that Creates Disharmonies
- 15.2 Solution: Adopt a System Wide Metric
- 15.3 Implementation: Focus on Flow
- 15.4 Command-and-Control Management
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15.5 Cost Accounting is a Root Cause Preventing Higher Performance
- A Common Goal and a Common Enemy
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15.1 Problem: Conflicting Metrics and Incentives
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16 The Kanban Method, Flow and Throughput
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16.1 Getting Started with Kanban
- The 3 Founding Principles of Kanban
- The 6 Core Practices of Kanban
- The 9 Values of Kanban
- 16.2 Links between the Theory of Constraints and Kanban
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16.3 Terminology
- The Confusion with Cycle Time
- Other Terms
- 16.4 A Little about Flow and Throughput
- 16.5 The Consequences of Variation
- 16.6 The Mirage of Balancing the Flow
- 16.7 Where to Improve
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16.1 Getting Started with Kanban
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17 The Weaknesses of Work-state WIP Limits
- 17.1 Process Management and Process Improvement in Kanban
- 17.2 The Rationale behind Work-state WIP Limits
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17.3 The Problems with Work-state WIP Limits
- Induced Instability
- Work-state WIP Limits are Useful when Starting
- Evolutionary but Direction-less Improvements
- Work-state WIP Limits Create Bottlenecks and Ignore the Real Constraint
- Bottlenecks are Not Constraints
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17.4 Finding the Primary Constraint on a Kanban Board
- The Guidance of Flow Time
- What is Next?
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18 Understanding the Impact of a Constraint
- 18.1 Choosing between XP and BDD
- 18.2 The Lean Perspective
- 18.3 The Accounting Perspective
- 18.4 The Constraints Management Perspective
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18.5 Constraints are Archimedean Levers
- Constraints Management is Key to Throughput Performance
- Constraints and SLAs
- Constraints and Investment Decisions
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19 Hyper-Kanban: Hyper-Productive Kanban
- 19.1 Find the Real Herbie
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19.2 The Need for the “Real” Kanban
- TPS Kanban
- Real Kanban on a Kanban Board
- 19.3 Drum-Buffer-Rope
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19.4 Drum-Buffer-Rope with Visible Replenishment Signal
- The Replenishment Token is the Drum Beat
- Capacity in the System vs. Capacity on the Constraint
- The Replenishment Pull Rule
- Buffer Signals
- Replenishment Signals
- When Murphy Surrounds Herbie
- Summary of Hyper-Kanban
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20 Understanding Common Cause Variation
- 20.1 Common Cause Variation
- 20.2 The Shortcoming of Kanban
- 20.3 Variation Across the Board
- 20.4 Common, Special, Assignable and Chance Causes
- 20.5 The Power of Improving with Common Causes
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21 Improving While In the Flow
- 21.1 Minimum Marketable Releases (MMR)
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21.2 Minimum Marketable Release as a WIP-Limiting Unit of Work
- A MMR is like a Fixed Scope Project
- A MMR Limits Work In Process
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21.3 Manage Risk by Varying Time, Not Scope
- “Cutting the Backlog” Does Not Cut It
- Lessons from Critical Chain Project Management
- The Best of Two Worlds
- 21.4 The MMR Buffer
- 21.5 Buffer Sizing
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21.6 Buffer Management, Usage, and Interpretation
- Buffer Burn Rate
- Buffer Zones
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21.7 Buffer Charts
- Buffer Fever Charts
- Buffer Control Charts
- Thresholds and Signals
- Trends
- Cumulative Flow Diagrams
- Combining Diagrams and Charts
- Signal Reaction Handled by Normal Kanban Policies
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21.8 How to Build and Monitor an MMR Buffer
- Little’s Law and the Assumption of Steady/Ideal State of Flow
- Little’s Law and the Conditions of Maximum Sustainable Pace
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22 Root Cause Analysis the TOC Way
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22.1 Risk Detection and Classification
- Reason Tracking
- The Example
- Frequency Analysis and Pareto Analysis
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22.2 Root Cause Analysis
- Relevant Problem and Current Reality Tree
- From Reason Codes to UDEs
- Assumptions for Actions may be UDEs
- 22.3 Validating the Assumptions
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22.4 Validating the Cause-Effect Relationships
- Searching Deeper
- Searching Wider: Multiple Causes and Additional Causes
- Do not Ignore “Obvious” Causes
- Multiple Root Causes
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22.5 Changing the Reality
- Span of Control
- Sphere of Influence
- Many Whys
- Injections
- Influence and Change
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22.1 Risk Detection and Classification
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14 Herbie and Kanban
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IV In Practice with Scrum
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23 One Way to Hyper-Productivity
- 23.1 Organizational Change is Hard and Takes Long!?
- 23.2 How to Build an Easy and Fast Organizational Change!
- 23.3 Little’s Law or Why it is no Good Idea to Have Too Much Customers in a Shop!
- 23.4 But where is This Constraint?
- 23.5 But what is the Right Order to Start?
- 23.6 Let’s Start
- 23.7 Get Your Work Organization Right - Rules are Easy to Change
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24 Reliable Scrum and Reliable Kanban
- 24.1 Define a “Major Release”
- 24.2 “Complete” the Backlog
- 24.3 Balance Resources, Backlog and Due Date
- 24.4 Execution Control
- 24.5 Reliable Scrum, the Hero for Product Owners
- 24.6 The Portfolio Overview
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25 From Reliable to Ultimate Scrum
- 25.1 The Optimum
- 25.2 How to Bring Ultimate Scrum to Life?
- 25.3 Drum-Buffer-Rope as the Steering Mechanism
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26 From Production to Projects
- 26.1 Critical Chain
- 26.2 Agile Enterprise
- 26.3 People Business
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23 One Way to Hyper-Productivity
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V Bibliography
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- A
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- F
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- I
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- M
- N
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- Q
- R
- S
- T
- U
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- W
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