Pedro Luiz Martins Cruz
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The title may seem strange, and there may be situations where the opposite happens. However, we often see people overwhelmed with work and complaining about their productivity in organizations. So, let's limit the work we do simultaneously to produce more and choose better what to produce.
April/13/2022 - 18 minutes reading
We use the term "in progress," but we can also consider "in parallel" or "in process." It's important to consider all work that somehow demands energy from professionals, even if it's just for communication or management.
It is a practice from the Kanban method, and in this article, we'll address it both in daily life and with the use of the method. You can solve it even without using the Kanban method, but you'll also see how powerful and helpful the Kanban method is.
The acronym WIP is widely used in the Kanban method, which stands for Work In Progress. We can also consider Work in Parallel or Work in Process; the acronym still holds.
But let's get to the practical side: how can we limit the work in progress?
How do we do this with several people working at the same time?
Having too much work going on at the same time causes some issues.
The first is that it takes longer to complete two tasks when we do them simultaneously, whereas doing them one at a time results in less total time. It happens because switching between tasks is not instantaneous; we need to get back into the flow, change tools, swap equipment, move around, and other possible activities that occur during the switch. When we have many tasks at once, we can have more switches and be interrupted more often, and the reasons for interruptions increase significantly with many tasks.
For example, a lawyer is reviewing four documents for the company: material purchase, technology service contracting, a union agreement, and the sale of a company service.
Let's assume he gave his first opinion on the material purchase and technology service contracting documents. At the moment, he's analyzing the union agreement and hasn't had time to review the sale of a company service.
He could be interrupted by a request for a fulfillment deadline for any of the documents, by a return of previously reviewed documents for further analysis, or by a request to prioritize the sale of a company service.
Imagine the situation: the material purchase document has been returned to him, so he interrupts his analysis of the union agreement to deal with the material purchase quickly. He has to stop what he was doing, locate the new document, and get organized to work on it.
While resolving the material purchase, someone interrupts him to ask how the union agreement is going. Then, someone else wants to ask a quick question about the technology service contracting. Each of these interruptions causes him to lose time returning to the material purchase. He spends time switching between activities, as each is in a different tool, email, folder, and so on.
After several interruptions and switches, he finally finished the material purchase and needs to return to the union agreement. More switches and interruptions will occur, and the time to complete all four tasks keeps increasing. The more work at the same time, the more opportunities for switches and interruptions.
The problem becomes even more severe when we consider a group of eight lawyers working on 50 documents simultaneously. The number of interruptions, conversations, information exchanges, tools, departments, and topics keeps increasing, and many inefficiencies arise.
Before discussing how to limit excessive work, let's clarify that we don't want to run out of work or have workers with nothing to do. Our goal with limiting work in progress is to reduce overload.
We will always have situations where a task depends on some information, activity, or approval to continue, and we will start a new task. Professionals want to practice their craft and do what they enjoy most. But this shouldn't be overdone to the point of causing inefficiencies.
If work runs out, we apply a different practice, not the work-in-progress limit.
Communication about work is part of the work itself. When we are working on Task A and communicating about Task B, it means we have at least two tasks in parallel.
Making the work and its status more transparent can significantly reduce the need for communication about the work's progress and the time it will take to complete. Often, people want basic information about the work and its progress.
You can do this by providing periodic work reports or proactively communicating the status of the tasks to people so that they don't cause more interruptions.
Using a Kanban board to visualize the work helps a lot with this and provides a wealth of information, including the progress of the activity, and can create a perception of time. We have an article on this topic: Visual Management - The Kanban Board and Beyond. The Kanban method uses the board to increase transparency and work management, greatly helping to reduce doubts about work progress.
Finishing a task is the best way to reduce the amount of work being done simultaneously. One technique is to allow the professional to complete the task they are currently working on before starting a new one.
Priority changes can happen, but they should be used sparingly. Changing priorities too often will cause more task switching, increasing the problems we've discussed and also increasing the possibility of interruptions, as more work will be done in parallel.
An exciting technique used in the Kanban method is the pull system. The next task is made available when the professional has the capacity, allowing them to finish one task first. When they are ready to work on something else, the priority will be considered.
Let's reduce interruptions, leaving only those that are genuinely urgent while ensuring that less urgent matters are addressed in a timely manner. However, if, even with work visibility, people still need to ask questions or interrupt the professional for other reasons, we need to find less intrusive methods.
Using messages that can be read at a suitable time, rather than interrupting immediately, is an excellent mechanism. However, for this to work, professionals should manage their message notifications carefully, keeping notifications for the most critical messages and silencing the less important ones. Sending a message, calling, or going to someone's desk can be done differently and cause varying levels of interruption. Use them according to the importance and urgency.
This is the most common approach. On the Kanban board, we assign numbers representing the work-in-progress limit for each step in the workflow. This ensures that the people performing that step focus on an acceptable, manageable amount of work, avoiding overload.
In this case, it's essential to limit both the work being executed and the work waiting between one step and another.
You can categorize your work by demand area, by the type of activity performed, or even by urgency. You can create different categories and apply work-in-progress limits for each, assigning different weights to each category if needed.
This type of work limit can also be called workload management, as it allows you to allocate more capacity to a category. As problems or opportunities arise, you can adjust the limits to direct the workload accordingly.
Another way to limit the amount of work is to set a limit for a specific period. For example, only 5 document reviews will be completed in the next two weeks. Therefore, the 6th document review can only be requested after those two weeks.
Although work-in-progress limits are a practice of Kanban, this kind of limit is used in the Scrum methodology through the use of sprints. People may not call it this or realize it, but it is still a work-in-progress limit.
So far, we've discussed the maximum work limit to reduce overload. However, there is also a work-in-progress limit that helps ensure there is always something to do: the minimum limit.
It can be used to indicate that some work must always be in progress. This type of limit is best applied at the beginning of the workflow to ensure that the following steps have work to process in the coming days.
A good technique is to create a funnel-like approach, with a higher volume of work in progress at the start of the workflow and gradually reducing the limits so that the final steps have less work in progress, allowing for greater focus on the tasks at hand.
A common approach is to limit work to 1 task per person. However, be cautious with this, as the professional may become inactive, waiting for approval, information, or a lengthy task completion. If this happens frequently in your environment, it's a good idea to set a slightly higher limit, allowing the professional to work on another task while waiting.
Still using a per-person limit, depending on the environment, you can set a limit of 2 or more items per person. Always keep an eye on excesses. Find the limit that delivers the best results.
An excellent way to choose the limit is to run the workflow for a while, gather information on the execution, and understand how much work the team can handle. After the initial calculation, run tests by increasing and decreasing the work-in-progress limit, then recalculate how much work was completed and how long it took. Find the limit that maximizes productivity and speed.
A significant benefit of using a work-in-progress limit is that people will focus on the most critical tasks. It becomes necessary to prioritize work.
For example, if it takes us one week to complete five tasks, and we limit ourselves to five tasks in progress, when we want to do ten tasks, we'll choose the five most important to complete first and then the five least important ones. We will have more focus each week and fewer chances for switching tasks and interruptions. This helps get work done better and faster.
In our Synergyc training, we practice these techniques and more to increase productivity. Check out our courses..
To learn more about the Kanban method, we offer official training from Kanban University here at Synergyc. including:
These courses provide globally recognized Kanban certifications that will strengthen your resume.
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