Manage the Flow Visually

Ideally, you want everyone within the flow to be able to self-monitor whether the rate, quality, and quantity of their work is optimized to meet the end of flow performance targets. You also want everyone to be able to distinguish between normal and abnormal operations quickly (real-time feedback) so that defective work is not sent downstream and help can be dispatched when and where it is needed to get things back to normal right away.

This principle typically makes timely information on status, progress, problems, and performance results visible to everyone within the flow as part of their daily work. It helps focus attention not only on maintaining the rhythm of regular flow operation, but also on establishing explicitly defined contingencies (i.e., a fast, known, and certain response) for removing barriers to flow when they occur.

Organize Around the End-To-End Flow

This principle makes the part/whole relationships throughout the end-to end flow the central context for organizing work, resources, and accountability. There are two aspects:

1. Overall flow (horizontal integration and management)

Who (what role and individual) is accountable for the end-to-end flow? Typically a new role of value steam manager or process owner is needed. This role is the customer’s advocate and sees to it that the customer’s definition of value is used to set the end of flow performance targets. Then, this role seeks to coordinate and align the moving parts of the organization throughout the flow to adjust goals, measures, jobs, resources, etc so that all are focused on meeting the customer’s performance targets.

2. Within and between each portion of the flow (Synchronization)

• Physical or virtual layout of work and work performers to emphasize flow
• Workload balancing
• Sequence of work
• Scheduling and prioritization
• Cross-training

Connect and Align Value-Added Work Fragments

Generally speaking, the more fragments involved as work progresses from order to delivery, the greater the complexity, cost, and lead time of your business. Workflow “nirvana” would be that the end-to-end flow that becomes your Interstate is composed only of the fewest number of 100% value-added work fragments, each of the right size, performed in a synchronized sequence that consumes the least amount of resources in order to provide just what the customer wants, when they want it. This does not happen overnight. It took about 40 years to create the U.S. Interstate Highway System. Toyota has been working over 50 years on their Toyota Production System.

In my experience, the jobs that make up knowledge work have not been consciously defined or designed around their desired contribution to an end-to-end flow as an organizing principle.

Typically, it takes a set of jobs from multiple functions to accomplish the tasks associated a producing a given item in knowledge-intensive work. Each job is made up of tasks, some of which turn out to be valued-added and some which are non-value added when viewed in the context of the appropriate workflow to which they belong. Very often a single knowledge worker’s job is made up of tasks that support (are a subset of) several different workflows or value streams.

As part of applying this principle you sort the (now visible) work fragments you identified earlier into value-added versus non value-added, and then group the value-added fragments into logical subsets and sequences that may or may not match current job definitions or department responsibilities. Simply put, you design the work so that is “flow-centric.”

Identify and Remove Barrriers to Flow

As part of this principle, you first learn to recognize the various forms of waste present in the way work is done currently. Then, more importantly, you discover the cause(s) of that waste. Finally, you develop counter-measures that eliminate or reduce the impact of each cause and make adjustments to the factors that hinder flow, such as IT, training, job design, goals, measures, priorities, policies & rules, etc, as an integrated set.

I've created two templates to help with this principle. See "Links to My Other Websites" (lower right hand corner) or click on the link (next 2 paragraphs) for the template you prefer.

The first, "Recognizing Waste in Knowledge-Intensive Work is a table that lists, defines, and provides examples of 8 types of waste that you'll likely encounter.

The second template is a list of "factors that may cause waste or impede flow of knowledge intensive work." Think of this as the usual suspects in creating barriers to flow (btf).

Let me know how these work for you.

Make the End-to-End Flow Visible

Work begins and ends with the customer, but what happens in between? What is the path that work takes as it progresses from order to delivery? Typically, the flow of work from order to delivery crosses several functions, departments, and roles; it has many hand-offs and touch-points. Every organization has some version of an order to delivery or order to cash workflow (aka value stream, or “core” cross-functional process). Is the current end-to-end workflow more like an Interstate Highway, or is it closer to a collection of much shorter roads, each with different speed limits, numbers of lanes, lots of stoplights, and owned by different jurisdictions?

Most organizations have yet to make this end-to-end workflow visible, or explicit. So instead of a high capacity, throughput-focused Interstate, what they have is a set of dispersed, disconnected, resource-consuming, work “fragments” hidden by the jobs and structural parts that make up the business. These fragments are embedded within the jobs; the jobs are clustered into like groups (finance, engineering, sales, manufacturing, etc.) of resources so the flow of work is not yet viewed, measured, or managed as a coherent whole.

I believe that it is helpful to know how the part of work that you are seeking to improve relates to, or impacts the primary Interstate that is the essence of your business, before you attempt to improve it, or reduce its cost. Likewise, you can provide great value to your customer and achieve strong benefits for your organization when you make this Interstate a well-known, well-understood, highly visible, organizational landmark.

This principle helps you establish the boundaries of the workflow, both end-to-end and between the fragments that comprise the end-to-end flow. It helps you surface all the fragments associated with a specific work product regardless of the job, department, technical specialty or functional discipline in which they current reside. Once visible, you can then determine whether you are working on some portion of the primary Interstate, something that connects directly to this Interstate, or something that does neither. This, in turn helps you decide whether a work fragment is value-added or non-value added.

Measure What Matters to the Customer

Often in knowledge-intensive work, there are few measures in place that relate to flow such as:

• Lead time
• Cycle time
• Value-added time
• Complete & Accurate
• First-pass yield or rolled throughput yield
• Throughput volume/time period (related to customer’s definition of “on time”)

When measures do exist, they tend to be oriented around resource consumption and they are often categorized or grouped into job, function, or project/program budget categories. I recently came across a quote that sums up this situation nicely, “Organizations knowing the cost of everything and the customer value of nothing will not survive *”

This principle establishes measures that help focus everyone’s work on the same customer-focused targets. It helps answer the question “how does this work or my portion of the flow contribute to what the customer wants?”

* quote from Stephen Parry, Head of Strategy and Change, Fujitsu Services, see inside front cover of Freedom from Command and Control by John Seddon.