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Re: Lay It Out: Design Patterns | Modus Institute

Jim Benson — Mon, 08 May 2017 11:59:27 -0000

The Zeigarnik effect is covered in the section on limiting WIP. It is the notion that the more active tasks we have, the more often we are thinking about and remembering the state of those tasks. The Zeigarnik effect shows us that the more we do, the less we are able to concentrate on our current task - our cognitive faculties are distracted. In this case, "Zeigarnik Playhouse" simply means that there is so much distraction going on that concentration is simply impossible.

Re: Lessons Learned: Retros and Kaizen Events | Modus Institute

Jim Benson — Fri, 02 Dec 2016 18:32:23 -0000

Working on that over the next month now that the Modus Tour is done for the year.

Re: A Brief Introduction to Personal Kanban | Modus Institute

Jim Benson — Fri, 02 Dec 2016 18:29:52 -0000

Hey Joseph, yes, and we talk about this in other videos. The basic reason is because "ready" seems like a command to some people and they don't stop to ask themselves "Is that ticket really necessary?"

Re: A Brief Introduction to Personal Kanban | Modus Institute

Jim Benson — Fri, 02 Dec 2016 18:28:49 -0000

All done.

Re: Lessons Learned: Retros and Kaizen Events | Modus Institute

Jim Benson — Fri, 21 Oct 2016 12:20:42 -0000

Awesome. Thank you for the feedback and the kind words. I'm going through in my head the best way to roll out mini courses.

But ... did you ever go to personalkanban.com ? :-) Or are you talking more of our project management type content?

Re: Learning from Completion: Organizing the Done | Modus Institute

Jim Benson — Thu, 20 Oct 2016 13:34:56 -0000

Thanks ... I know we smash a lot into a "small batch".

Re: Learning from Completion: Organizing the Done | Modus Institute

Jim Benson — Thu, 20 Oct 2016 13:34:34 -0000

David ... it does this now. I will email you.

Re: Lessons Learned: Retros and Kaizen Events | Modus Institute

Jim Benson — Thu, 20 Oct 2016 13:33:39 -0000

Hey Adolfo,

There is some of this in other sections. In this case, if we go way-deep on retros we suddenly end up with a Retro class stuck in a PK class. There are a lot of add-ons that we are considering: Retros, psych of work, team building, project set-up, better meetings, etc. You have been, personally, an awesome student. You've watched most of the videos and are obviously taking it to heart. The average on-line learner does things a little more piecemeal.

So a quick question for you would be ... if we had something like a directed (maybe 10 or 15 vid class) just on Retros and Personal Kanban for a much lower fee than the larger PK class, would that be of interest to you? I'm certain all the things I listed above wouldn't be, so I'm finding a way to provide lessons that are directed, but don't result in a single 500 lecture PK class. :)

Re: Lean Basics: Understand Your Work | Modus Institute

Jim Benson — Tue, 11 Oct 2016 10:56:27 -0000

That should be part of the dialogue for how you provide value. Your boss (in this case your immediate customer) has value needs that you have agreed to satisfy. Those needs evolve as we do the task. So in this case, her value needs have shifted. Customer value needs always shift, so that, in and of itself, isn't necessarily a problem.

The question here is ... is the conversation you've developed healthy? If your boss just changes her mind arbitrarily and without understanding what the survey is supposed to actually do or the impacts her request has on your other work, that is a problem.

Right now, though, at face value, her changes would be reflected by just making the ticket dwell a little longer on the board.

Re: Overload is a System: The Challenges of Limiting WIP | Modus Institute

Jim Benson — Fri, 07 Oct 2016 13:32:39 -0000

Zeigarnik comes in a different section. It's a challenge to get so much into so little time. :)

Re: Overload is a System: The Challenges of Limiting WIP | Modus Institute

Jim Benson — Fri, 07 Oct 2016 13:32:05 -0000

II always wish there was a "like" button. Thank you for that feedback.

Re: Why To Use Personal Kanban Tool?

Jim Benson — Fri, 24 Jun 2016 12:38:36 -0000

Interesting ideas. I do appreciate that you don't conflate Personal Kanban with "Individual Kanban". Individuals can use a Personal Kanban, but the word "Personal" means "of value to people" as opposed to industrial kanban that is always items of delivery (like an engine block).

While I love open source both as an ideal and as a method of creation, I'm not sure that the perfect Personal Kanban tool would need to be open source as much as it might want to be extendable by the user. Kind of like Slack in that regard.

Fun article. Thank you!

Re: A Brief Introduction to Personal Kanban | Modus Institute

Jim Benson — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 02:51:40 -0000

You can certainly do that. I usually have only one or two things in DOING myself. In the videos (and in classes as well), I am trying to show the flow of work. But you can have as few things in DOING as you like. That just means you focus on them even more and finish them even more quickly.

Re: The Benefits Of Kanban

Jim Benson — Thu, 16 Jun 2016 11:11:54 -0000

Nice post!

I would ask though ... why is "Done" before "Testing"?

Re: Learning from Completion: Organizing the Done | Modus Institute

Jim Benson — Wed, 04 May 2016 11:56:59 -0000

You are right David. We used to have this and have been discussing internally how to make this happen for ISO, PMI, and other continuing education credits. Please look for this to be implemented soon.

Re: Lay It Out: Design Patterns | Modus Institute

Jim Benson — Tue, 03 May 2016 19:12:36 -0000

What I do is break the long-term work into pomodoros. In this image you can see that I have two on-going projects that I do a few pomodoros each day. One was the French translation which is done, as far as pomodoros go. The other two are "Long Hall" - I have a long term project to clean out a huge storage area in my house and turn it into productive space (long, boring work, but broken out into 3 daily chunks it's been pretty easy). The other was laundry as I'm getting ready to head into a spate of travel.

The hallway project has taken well over a month of time and been quite menial and repetitive.

When you get into something like your classes ... I may well start the week with units I want to complete, make a ticket for each unit, and then move as I get them done. I would do this because writing down even just the titles of the units and then moving them through the board will reinforce what you are learning and make it more likely that you will complete the work.

Re: What You Did: the Done Column | Modus Institute

Jim Benson — Sun, 24 Apr 2016 11:56:35 -0000

Thank you!

Will check on this.

Re: What You Did: the Done Column | Modus Institute

Jim Benson — Sun, 24 Apr 2016 11:56:17 -0000

Hey Jeremy,

There certainly can. But first, i would ask yourself what you really get out of using a timer for your tasks. If you are interrupted, do you pause the timer or let it run?

One issue you will run into with strict timing is that you learn how long the actual work for a task might take, but not how long it really takes to complete. In other words, actual completion time includes interruptions. I would recommend you actually just write down on your post it the start time and the end time for that task. That cycle time will now include interruptions and "the real world." Otherwise you get a "time" but it is actually much less precise than you think.

The other tasks that you are mentioning are covered in sections on interruptions and time management. There can be very meaningful retrospectives on that activity (it is likely what you spend most of your time doing). The questions are ... are those interruptions helpful? meaningful? actually part of your job? taking you away from your "real work"? or ... are they actually your "real work?"

The "Organizing Your Work" section goes into some detail about this.

Jim

Re: Keep it Manageable: Small Batches | Modus Institute

Jim Benson — Fri, 18 Mar 2016 11:22:56 -0000

I'm assuming you mean in the last "I'm the one that needs to say anything" that people don't listen. That can certainly be true. Most people are overloaded, stressed, and pretty scared. If that is a consistent issue, create visual systems that provide as much feedback for you as possible but also lets them see results when issues arise. People become more willing to listen when they, themselves. feel heard.

Re: Issues with Your Distributed Teams? | Modus Institute

Jim Benson — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 12:13:38 -0000

That is certainly the goal. People tend to micromanage when they don't trust the system. Lack of trust comes from lack of information and feedback.

If we can use the visual systems to convey the (hopefully accurate) message that everything is okay ... then the urge to micromanage abates. If it's working fine, we stop obsessing over it.

Re: A Brief Introduction to Personal Kanban | Modus Institute

Jim Benson — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 20:37:09 -0000

You seem to be implying that life is complicated. :-)

Indeed it is.

There can be different kanban boards for different projects and maybe there should. For example you are on Team A and Team B .... they don't need to know the full workings of the other project ... but you might want to be able to change your WIP from time to time on each project.

So, if you are really working hard on project B, you may put A on hold or limit your WIP to one Project A task at a time until B lets up.

But .. most importantly ... if you have too many projects .... that's not something the kanban board should tell you not to do. You should already be limiting your projects to a manageable size ... like one or two at a time. The last video in Getting the Work Done discusses this.

http://modusinstitute.com/c...

Re: A Brief Introduction to Personal Kanban | Modus Institute

Jim Benson — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 19:11:19 -0000

Let's think of this like there's a sliding scale of tasks.

1. Big ones that have lots of big steps - these could languish for weeks.

2. Tasks with observable value that take a few hours.

3. Little steps you'd do to complete 1 or 2.

I would aim at making your board hold Level 2 tasks. Things you can identify and finish fairly quickly. Maybe the take a day or so, but you can finish them and they can move along. Level 3 tasks are things that would be done in a few minutes and are just steps you take to do something else systematically or they are components of a task.

Below is a ticket from our Personal Kanban to create the Value unit of this class. While it moved through a value stream that of Level Two stages that went from filming to production to post production, (these were big enough to cause a lot of dwell time). But there was also a point where there was a set of steps that were generally done in a few hours total. Rather than put those points in the value stream, we made them a checklist in the card. These level three tasks needed to be done and recorded, but would have made tickets being moved every 15 minutes.

Re: What You Did: the Done Column | Modus Institute

Jim Benson — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 18:46:28 -0000

Could those tasks be broken down into smaller tasks you could complete?

You can increase your WIP limit, but if you have a lot of tasks that are not broken down (i.e. they contain a lot of other little tasks), you are going to keep manufacturing that problem.

My first response is to make your batch sizes smaller.

Re: What You Did: the Done Column | Modus Institute

Jim Benson — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:22:32 -0000

Awesome issue.

You have some choices here.

First ... is this something that happens often? If it is, then you may want to build that into your workflow. Make "Mulling" a column with a WIP limit of one.

Second ... give yourself a break. That thing you need to mull over is a complex problem. Is there someone you can discuss it with? Can you set a meeting with yourself to whiteboard or otherwise process those "ideas".

Jim

Re: What to Do Now: the Doing Column | Modus Institute

Jim Benson — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:12:35 -0000

David,

That another matter altogether. If you are consistently finding that you are waiting for a specific person, group, or action, that's probably part of your value stream. For example, your value stream might look something like:

Options | Initial Work | Review | Final Work | Done

Where the "review" step is a bonafide part of your workflow ... if you find that you are overwhelmed by waiting for others, they are likely part of a larger process, not a random event.