How to Handle Abandoned Work Items to Preserve the Stability of Your Delivery System
Discarded work has a massive impact on the predictability of your system and your overall performance. Even though this is a hugely neglected topic, it actually has great potential to introduce opportunities for improvement in your working practices. I’ve never…
The Little-Known Facts about Little’s Law: How to Fast Track Your Way to More Predictable Delivery Systems
Sustainable predictability can be achieved by enabling stable delivery systems. And Little’s Law ultimately defines that phenomenon. Let’s look into some little-known facts about the law and reveal the true value that it brings to our management practices. What is…
4 Myths of Probabilistic Forecasting
Probabilistic forecasting is an approach that helps teams produce dependable delivery predictions based on their past performance data. A lot of teams, however, still question whether they should use this method. Today, we’ll dispel four of the most widely spread myths…
How to Develop a Probabilistic Mindset to Enable Reliable Delivery Commitments
Developing a probabilistic mindset is the ultimate secret to managing risks effectively and making reliable delivery commitments. Making probabilistic forecasts helps us maintain high levels of customer and stakeholder trust, satisfaction and retention. It also allows us to define service…
Why Your Delivery Predictions Will Always Be Wrong if You Keep Mapping Story Points to Hours
When it comes to making delivery commitments, mapping story points to hours to estimate your work is a terrible piece of advice. In fact, there is a very simple exercise that can be used to reveal this paradox. Bar Vaccin…
How to Meet Your Long-Term Goals Using Continuous Forecasting
Continuous forecasting is ultimately the best strategy that you can implement to stay on track and keep your commitments in the long run. When my husband and I moved to Belgium, about 8 years ago, I fell in love with…
5 Work Management Tips to Avoid Project Delays
Managing the flow of work effectively and staying on top of the obstacles that hinder your performance is the cornerstone to avoiding project delays. If you’ve committed to a project deadline and along the way you’ve realized you won’t be…
Release Planning: How to Decide How Much Work to Commit to In Your Next Release Without Counting Hours (or Story Points)
Release planning is essential to fulfilling the expectations of both your customers and your teams. However, often the approaches we use to create a release plan are inherently unreliable. One of the senior managers that I’m currently consulting came to…
When is the Right Time to Say “Yes” to New Commitments?
Saying “Yes” to the right commitments (and “No” to the wrong ones) is all about making reliable decisions on what work to take on next. These are paramount to managing a steady flow of work and meeting your customers’ expectations….
Keep Your Teddy Bear! Introducing Probabilistic Forecasting to Your Team
When it comes to introducing probabilistic forecasting, it is paramount that you tackle any resistance head-on. Do you have kids? My son David is 4 years old, and my daughter Louise is now 6. She will start first grade in…
THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO
READING THE CUMULATIVE FLOW DIAGRAM
How to Recognize the Most Common CFD Patterns and What They Mean for Your Workflow