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Welcome to the “Coffee-Breaks.” The basic idea is that you already do quite a good job. And no one needs someone else to tell him what to do! But from time to time, it could be useful to have a stimulating idea/question to think about how to improve the flow of work and ideas.

Welcome to the first of the “Taskboard Coffee-Breaks” to improve your way of working with task boards to get ideally more productive.

Each coffee-break gives some basic information followed by a few questions - not to test the knowledge, but to let you think about different aspects of the concept. In the end, it’s you to decide whether it will be helpful for you and whether to give it a try. And all that without teaching and telling – just a few minutes of reading and thinking while you drink an excellent cup of coffee!
Minimize Work-in-Process (WIP)

If you talk or think about flow (of work) there are only two things you have to do right! First, the amount of work-in-process (WIP) has to be as low as possible, and second, you have to have a signal that shows you where to look at to keep (and improve) the flow. The signal will be the topic of one of the next coffee-breaks. So let's start thinking about WIP.

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* 1. As a starter. What do you think. Which task board will result in higher Flow?

In the end, it's all about work-in-process (WIP). But what is this WIP? What do you count as WIP? What is the optimal size of WIP?

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Example of a simple task board (A).

Example of a simple task board (A).

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* 2. What do you count as WIP on the task board (A)?

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Example of a process-oriented task board (B)

Example of a process-oriented task board (B)

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* 3. What do you count as WIP on the task board (B)?

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* 4. How many creative tasks can be worked on by one person simultaneously?

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* 5. What is the optimal WIP (number of open tasks) If the team has 10 people?

0 number of open tasks 20
Clear
i We adjusted the number you entered based on the slider’s scale.

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* 6. If you are practicing pair review (a compelling idea to do so) and in mean, you spend 20% of the time doing pair reviews – what is the optimal WIP (number of open Tasks) if the team has 10 people?

0 number of open tasks 20
Clear
i We adjusted the number you entered based on the slider’s scale.

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* 7. if you are practicing pair reviews (s. above with 20% of the time), and if you have some kind of planning, preparing and socializing, or even education time, e.g., 20%. What is the optimal WIP number of open tasks?

0 number of open tasks 20
Clear
i We adjusted the number you entered based on the slider’s scale.
So typically the optimal number of open tasks is much lower than the number of team members. But how to reach this?

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* 8. Please sort the following options to reduce the number of open tasks according to their speed and effect. The one with the highest speed and best effect on top.

So the most important thing is to get clarity in the team about (1) What is counted as WIP and (2) reduce the number of open tasks until the number is lower than the number of members in the team.

And yes we know it's not always easy to do so. Because reducing the WIP always surfaces the real underlying process problems - but it's worth to solve them.

So the end of the coffee-break is near ...

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* 9. If you want to get a small pdf with your results and the statistics of how all others answered the questions you can provide your eMail. We will just use it to send you the pdf. The pdf will also include background information if you are interested in more Details.

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* 10. DSGVO/DGPR how to use the given eMail?

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* 11. How useful was this Coffee-Break for you?

Thanks for taking this coffee-break with us - sincerely your,
Wolfram Müller
Founder BlueDolphin - https://blue-dolphin.world
Our imprint and information security policy you'll find on the Blue-Dolphin-Homepage.

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