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
-
-
- 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
-
2.1 Natural Force-based Social Networks (Adjacency Diagrams)
-
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?
-
1 A Case of Software Hyper-Productivity
-
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
-
4.1 From Rationalism to Empiricism
-
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
-
7.1 A Latent Conflict
-
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
-
-
4 The Nature of Knowledge Work
-
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
-
15.1 Problem: Conflicting Metrics and Incentives
-
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
-
16.1 Getting Started with Kanban
-
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
-
22.1 Risk Detection and Classification
-
14 Herbie and Kanban
-
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
-
23 One Way to Hyper-Productivity
-
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
-
-
Authors have earned$10,324,605writing, 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
Within 45 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.
See full terms
Free Updates. DRM Free.
If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).
Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers), EPUB (for phones and tablets) and MOBI (for Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.
Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.
Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them
Top Books
- #1
Continuous Delivery Pipelines
Dave FarleyThis practical handbook provides a step-by-step guide for you to get the best continuous delivery pipeline for your software.
- #2
Top 20 Digital Health Trends For The Near Future
Dr. Bertalan MeskoDigital technology could help transform unsustainable healthcare systems, provide cheaper, faster, and more effective solutions for diseases – and could lead to healthier individuals living in healthier communities.
In this book, we analyze the top 20 trends shaping the future of healthcare, and what they all look like in practice.
- #3
The Hundred-Page Machine Learning Book
Andriy BurkovEverything you really need to know in Machine Learning in a hundred pages.
- #4
Introducing EventStorming
Alberto BrandoliniThe deepest tutorial and explanation about EventStorming, straight from the inventor.
- #5
Atomic Kotlin
Bruce Eckel and Svetlana IsakovaFor both beginning and experienced programmers! From the author of the multi-award-winning Thinking in C++ and Thinking in Java together with a member of the Kotlin language team comes a book that breaks the concepts into small, easy-to-digest "atoms," along with exercises supported by hints and solutions directly inside IntelliJ IDEA!
- #6
C++20
Rainer GrimmC++20 is the next big C++ standard after C++11. As C++11 did it, C++20 changes the way we program modern C++. This change is, in particular, due to the big four of C++20: ranges, coroutines, concepts, and modules.
- #7
CCIE Service Provider Version 4 Written and Lab Exam Comprehensive Guide
Nicholas RussoThe service provider landscape has changed rapidly over the past several years. Networking vendors are continuing to propose new standards, techniques, and procedures for overcoming new challenges while concurrently reducing costs and delivering new services. Cisco has recently updated the CCIE Service Provider track to reflect these changes; this book represents the author's personal journey in achieving that certification.
- #8
Hacking your way around in Emacs
Marcin BorkowskiThis is an intermediate textbook on Emacs Lisp. Learn how to write you own commands and make Emacs truly your editor, suited to your needs!
- #9
Ansible for DevOps
Jeff GeerlingAnsible is a simple, but powerful, server and configuration management tool. Learn to use Ansible effectively, whether you manage one server—or thousands.
- #10
Visualise, document and explore your software architecture
Simon BrownA short guide to visualising, documenting and exploring your software architecture.
Top Bundles
- #1
Software Architecture for Developers: Volumes 1 & 2 - Technical leadership and communication
2 Books
"Software Architecture for Developers" is a practical and pragmatic guide to modern, lightweight software architecture, specifically aimed at developers. You'll learn:The essence of software architecture.Why the software architecture role should include coding, coaching and collaboration.The things that you really need to think about before... - #2
CCIE Service Provider Ultimate Study Bundle
2 Books
Piotr Jablonski, Lukasz Bromirski, and Nick Russo have joined forces to deliver the only CCIE Service Provider training resource you'll ever need. This bundle contains a detailed and challenging collection of workbook labs, plus an extensively detailed technical reference guide. All of us have earned the CCIE Service Provider certification... - #4
9 Books-Bundle: Shut Up and Code!
9 Books
"Shut up and code." Laughter in the audience. The hacker had just plugged in his notebook and started sharing his screen to present his super-smart Python script. "Shut up and code" The letters written in a white literal coding font on black background was the hackers' home screen background mantra. At the time, I was a first-year computer... - #7
Practical Foundations of Debugging, Disassembling, Reversing
2 Books
The books teach assembly language foundations necessary for deep debugging and program reconstruction. They are useful for: - Software technical support and escalation engineers; - Software engineers coming from different backgrounds, OS, and programming/debugging environments; - Software testers; - C/C++ software engineers without assembly... - #8
Software Architecture and Design Practice Reference
2 Books
Dive deeper in Software Architecture with the Design Practice Reference. Learn all about software architecture and design from the books in this bundle:Software Architecture covers topics from quality attributes to designing and modeling components, interfaces, connectors, and containers, all the way to services and microservices. The Design... - #10
Mastering Containers
2 Books
Docker and Kubernetes are taking the world by storm! These books will get you up-to-speed fast! Docker Deep Dive is over 400 pages long, and covers all objectives on the Docker Certified Associate exam.The Kubernetes Book includes everything you need to get up and running with Kubernetes!
