Team Workflow

Working together as a team is how we move things from “In Progress” to “Done”, as rapidly as possible in value sequence. It’s important for minimizing WIP that the team looks at the backlog as the team’s work and does not pre-assign work to individuals.

Make Work Visible

To create and maintain the flow of delivery, we need the following:

• Definition of Done
• A way to visualize the workflow, virtual or physical, with a prioritized backlog that has not been refined too far in the future.

Plan Work

Unplanned work is anything coming into the backlog that has not been committed to, or prioritized. This can include feature requests, support tickets, etc.

Common struggles teams face with unplanned work can be:

• Work that has not been prioritized
• Work that has not been decomposed
• Work that is unplanned

Do Work

Completed work meets the Definition of Ready when work begins, the Definition of Done when work is delivered, and can be completed in less than two days.

Process smells identified for completing work include:

• Context switching
• Ineffective demos that prevent early feedback
• Multiple teams own pieces of the process (Build, Test, Deploy, etc.)
• Status and visibility of work is unclear
• Siloed work on the team

Improve Work

In order to plan and complete work effectively, there must be an improvement process in place. The improvement process is centered around feedback loops.

Challenges associated with the improvement process:

• Infrequent or nonexistent demos
• Infrequent or unactionable retrospectives

Measuring Your Workflow

A good measure to implement in your team’s workflow is WIP. Limiting work in progress can help reduce constraints in your workflow.

Development cycle time is a key measure of success when trying to optimize and automate your team’s workflow.