Tame the Flow

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Tame the Flow

Hyper-Productive Knowledge-Work Management

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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"

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- Português

Steve Tendon

I create pragmatic, human-centered, inclusive, sustainable, systemic breakthrough performance-innovation in knowledge-intensive digital businesses.

I wrote the book: "Tame your Work Flow: How Dr. Goldratt of 'The Goal' would apply the Theory of Constraints to rethink knowledge-work management," among many others.

I created the TameFlow Approach: an approach that will allow you to deliver superior business outcomes in knowledge-work, without compromising sustainability, quality or humanity.

Wolfram Müller

High-Speed-Project-Manager, Integrationist, Scrum-Kanban-Critical-Chain-Protagonist and Consultant for Companies which want to go to the limit!

Check my site for classical project management: Speed4Projects.net (German) Check my site for agile project management at the limit: Reliable-Scrum.Info (English)

Or find me on Goggle Plus or XING or LinkedIn

- - The Book’s Blog
  - Credits
  - Acknowledgments
  - About the Authors
    - Steve Tendon
    - Wolfram Müller
    - Disclaimer
- Introduction
  - Who Should Read this Book, and Why
  - Structure of this Book
  - How to Read this Book
I What and Why
- 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?
- 2 Shapes and Patterns of Hyper-Productivity
  - 2.1 Natural Force-based Social Networks (Adjacency Diagrams)
    - The Adjacency Diagrams of Quattro Pro for Windows
  - 2.2 Interaction Grids
    - The Interaction Grid of Quattro Pro for Windows
  - 2.3 Other Metrics
    - Connectedness
    - Communication Saturation
    - Communication Intensity Ratio
  - 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
  - 2.8 Scrum as Prepackaged Patterns
    - Scrum’s Rediscovery of Patterns
    - Scrumbuts, Blue Pills and Red Pills
    - Scrum does Not Lead to Hyper-Productivity
- 3 Patterns and Pattern Languages
  - 3.1 What Patterns are Not
  - 3.2 Alexandrian Patterns
    - Introduction to Alexandrian Patterns
    - More about Alexandrian Patterns
  - 3.3 Patterns are a Form of Knowledge
  - 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
  - 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
  - 3.7 Pattern Language Validation
    - Coherence
    - Completeness
  - 3.8 Patterns of Hyper-Productivity
  - 3.9 Two Noble Patterns of Hyper-Productivity
    - The Unity of Purpose Pattern
    - The Community of Trust Pattern
  - 3.10 Why All This?
II Management, Leadership and Organization
- 4 The Nature of Knowledge Work
  - 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
- 5 Management’s Profound Understanding of Knowledge Work
  - 5.1 Profound Understanding of the Fundamental Process
  - 5.2 The Wicked Problem of Strategy Making
    - Coping with Wicked Problems
    - Empiricism at the Heart of Strategy Making
  - 5.3 Capital Goods and Social Learning Processes
    - Knowledge about Product and about Process
  - 5.4 Strategy Making, Artful Making and Software Development
- 6 Management’s Responsibility and Learning Organization
  - 6.1 Process Innovation and Double-Loop Learning
  - 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
- 7 Discovery Driven Planning
  - 7.1 A Latent Conflict
    - Buy or Create Knowledge
    - Management’s Conflict: Plan or Experiment?
  - 7.2 The Discovery Driven Planning Approach
    - A Disciplined Approach
    - Counting the Beans Backwards
    - Tolerance for Failure
    - Assumptions are Constantly Checked and Re-checked
- 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
- 9 The Incremental Funding Method
  - - 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
  - 9.1 Risk Management in the IFM
    - Caveats when Combining IFM and Agile
- 10 Throughput Accounting
  - - Throughput Accounting vs. Cost Accounting
    - Cost Accounting is not for Management Decisions
    - Throughput Accounting can be Reconciled with Cost Accounting
  - 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
  - 10.3 Throughput Accounting’s Effects on Delivery
    - Throughput Accounting’s Effects on Other Common Processes
  - 10.4 Conclusions
- 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
  - 11.4 People Factors and Change Management
    - Categories of Legitimate Reservation
    - Policy Constraints
    - The Layers of Resistance
- 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
  - 12.5 Checking In
    - The Check In Protocol
    - The Check Out Protocol
    - The Pass Protocol
  - 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
- 13 Critical Roles, Leadership and More
  - - The Patron Role
    - Play by the Rules of the Game
  - 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
III In Practice with the Kanban Method
- 14 Herbie and Kanban
  - 14.1 The Story of Herbie
  - 14.2 Herbie and Work in Process
  - 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
- 15 Unity of Purpose and Community of Trust
  - 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
  - 15.5 Cost Accounting is a Root Cause Preventing Higher Performance
    - A Common Goal and a Common Enemy
- 16 The Kanban Method, Flow and Throughput
  - 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
  - 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
- 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
  - 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
  - 17.4 Finding the Primary Constraint on a Kanban Board
    - The Guidance of Flow Time
    - What is Next?
- 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
  - 18.5 Constraints are Archimedean Levers
    - Constraints Management is Key to Throughput Performance
    - Constraints and SLAs
    - Constraints and Investment Decisions
- 19 Hyper-Kanban: Hyper-Productive Kanban
  - 19.1 Find the Real Herbie
  - 19.2 The Need for the “Real” Kanban
    - TPS Kanban
    - Real Kanban on a Kanban Board
  - 19.3 Drum-Buffer-Rope
  - 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
- 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
- 21 Improving While In the Flow
  - 21.1 Minimum Marketable Releases (MMR)
  - 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
  - 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
  - 21.6 Buffer Management, Usage, and Interpretation
    - Buffer Burn Rate
    - Buffer Zones
  - 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
  - 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
- 22 Root Cause Analysis the TOC Way
  - 22.1 Risk Detection and Classification
    - Reason Tracking
    - The Example
    - Frequency Analysis and Pareto Analysis
  - 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
  - 22.4 Validating the Cause-Effect Relationships
    - Searching Deeper
    - Searching Wider: Multiple Causes and Additional Causes
    - Do not Ignore “Obvious” Causes
    - Multiple Root Causes
  - 22.5 Changing the Reality
    - Span of Control
    - Sphere of Influence
    - Many Whys
    - Injections
    - Influence and Change
IV In Practice with Scrum
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 26 From Production to Projects
  - 26.1 Critical Chain
  - 26.2 Agile Enterprise
  - 26.3 People Business
V Bibliography
- - - A
    - B
    - C
    - D
    - E
    - F
    - G
    - H
    - I
    - J
    - K
    - L
    - M
    - N
    - O
    - P
    - Q
    - R
    - S
    - T
    - U
    - V
    - W
    - X
    - Y
    - Z

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Tame the Flow

Retired

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"

Share this book

Translation

Authors have earned$10,052,337writing, publishing and selling on Leanpub, earning 80% royalties while saving up to 25 million pounds of CO2 and up to 46,000 trees.Learn more about writing on Leanpub

The Leanpub 45-day 100% Happiness Guarantee

Free Updates. DRM Free.

Write and Publish on Leanpub

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