Several of my trusted advisor clients have asked this question, “Why do I need to choose between effectiveness and efficiency? Why can't I have both?”
A great question.
I recommend they start with effectiveness. That occurs when they say yes to just the work they need now, to reduce the organizational WIP. Start with managing the project portfolio. Assign one project at a time to a cross-functional team, don't add more work, all that good stuff.
Then move to efficiency, by asking the managers and the teams to lower their WIP and right-size their work.
These smart people ask, “Start with the managers? Why?”
Because the management decision delay time tends to increase organizational WIP and cause delays in the teams. That's neither effective nor efficient.
Start With Managers to Reduce Decision Delay Time
If you have not yet read Why Minimize Management Decision Time, please do. The costs of management delays are real. Here are some:
- When people don't know what to work on, they start more work. That increases the team's WIP and creates lower throughput. Not efficient.
- If people have to interrupt what they're doing now, context switch to do something different, and then return to the original work. As a result, they incur multitasking costs that increase cycle time and increase their WIP. That's not efficient. (Or effective.)
- Worse, if people have to estimate future work, they will be wrong. One way for them to predict is to create small prototypes. That takes time, which increases cycle time and increases WIP. Worse, while that prototype might be effective, it's inefficient for their current work. (I'm dubious about the future effectiveness of these prototypes.)
When managers decide as reasonably fast as possible, they are most effective and efficient. Those decisions also allow teams to be effective and efficient.
What is Effective and Efficient?
I've thrown around these terms, so let me clarify:
- Effectiveness is when we work on the right things, the work that will have the most impact on the organization. Often, that impact is immediate because people stop working on “failure demand,” sidestepping broken code or tests. Or, people stop working on all the “other” work that might add value at some time in the future, but is not as important as the work they need to work on now.
- Efficiency is when we can do that work “faster.” This is why I like to measure cycle time, not velocity. When we measure cycle time, we see where we have delays and get ideas of how to fix those delays.
One way to reduce delays is to right-size the work. The other is to reduce WIP. When we use both, we really gain.
Reduce WIP and Right Size the Work
No one can violate Little's Law. In fact, sometimes, I think the universe is out to create delays in my work. (See Hofstadter's Law and Murphy's Law in that post.)
Little's Law says if we reduce our WIP, we can decrease our Cycle time and increase our Throughput.
One way to decrease Cycle time is to right-size stories. I like to ask a team, “Does this work feel as if we can finish it as a team in a day or so?” If the team says no, what's the first increment of value? We can do that. (For more details, see How to Right-Size Your Stories for Better Predictability.)
Managers can use that question, too. If a decision is too difficult, is there a part of that decision we can make now, to be more effective?
I hate postponing work. Instead, I want to finish something (anything!) now and continue. That allows me to be more effective.
Start with Effectiveness
If you want to be both effective and efficient, start with effectiveness. If you reduce the work you don't have to consider, you can make the best use of your time. That's all about the WIP.
Then, move to efficiency. Measure cycle time and look for delays that increase that cycle time. Review the size of the work and your collaboration. The more a team collaborates, the faster the cycle time and the more throughput. When a team collaborates, even on “large” items, they finish faster. (This requires a team use flow efficiency thinking.)
Start with less work (lower/reduce WIP). Right-size the work. Easy to say, not so easy to do.
You can be effective and efficient. But the hardest part for my clients is saying No to more work.