I remember a television show from my distant past, Kids Say The Darndest Things (in re-runs). In the version of the show I first remember, Art Linkletter would ask children questions about life which they would answer. The children would often say what was on their minds without a filter. It was amusing. As a coach and mentor, I often observe meetings and events to debrief with the person(s) I am coaching afterward and provide them with a different perspective. I observed a planning session in which a stakeholder stated, “ Combine these two items, they are similar, and only count it as one toward our capacity. ”What?  It was 4 AM in my time zone and I was concerned I had misheard. Subsequent actions by the team proved I had heard correctly. Kids don’t have a monopoly on saying the darndest things but when adults say it the outcome is not always amusing. 

The request to combine two pieces of work, because they are similar, sounds innocuous. Heck, you might argue that fudging the capacity limit of the team’s work entry process by one item might not be too horrible, However, the combined action opens up a can of worms – big fat squishy worms.

The first of the worms is a potential loss of nuance that each piece of work might require to deliver maximum value. Once upon a time, I combined two requests for report changes because I thought it would be more efficient (not to duck a WIP or capacity limit). I did the work, tested it, got sign-off, and popped it into production. Booya, two birds with one stone. Over time I learned that while both requestors were happy getting something. Neither was quite happy with the compromises I made to get both done at once. 

The second worm is increased complexity. Size and complexity are intertwined. Combining two similar requests creates a piece of work that is bigger than either would be individually. Even if the solution is no more difficult, there will be more variables to consider, different slices of data, and more test cases required. Putting two pieces of work together increases the cognitive load on the person doing the work; maybe a little, maybe a lot, or maybe just enough to cause a mistake. A mistake means rework which will wipe away all the efficiency.

A third worm is the possibility of reduced solution flexibility. Going back to my foray into combining two report requests, when I reflected on why both requesters weren’t thrilled I realized I had made a compromise in my design choice. To solve both problems I had made a choice that left both requesters with fewer choices available for them to configure the report. While it worked and delivered value, I had not delivered joy.

The fourth and SQUISHIEST worm (maybe a poisonous snake) is the impact on the ethics of the team. The stakeholder was directly asking the team to violate the team’s practice and then to lie about it. A team that can be pressured into abandoning good practice and then lying about it will erode the trust others have in them. Also since all this happened in front of other stakeholders and their Product Owner, I will bet that the request will be made again and again. 

If you think this scenario was a freak occurrence, a little later in the week a colleague told me they had heard a product manager suggest that a team member “Lego a few items together” with an item the team had committed to accomplishing during the current iteration. A very similar situation.

Messing up work intake can have ramifications that range from poor quality to ethical lapses. As leaders, it is on us to fix the problem and then to make sure it stays fixed. 

Advertisement:

Jeremy Willets and I have written Mastering Work Intake: From Chaos to Predictable Delivery which will be released on January 9th. Regardless of whether you’re creating, enhancing, or maintaining software products, work intake is a challenge you deal with constantly. Doing the right work at the right time can make or break your project, and there are surprisingly few resources to show you how to manage this process effectively. You need to know what your team is executing, what work is next, and the skill sets required to do the work.

Mastering Work Intake: From Chaos to Predictable Delivery focuses on the full pipeline that work follows as it enters and exits your organization, including the different types of work that enter at different levels and times. It is a must-read for agile coaches, Scrum Masters, product owners, project and portfolio managers, team members, and anyone who touches the software development process. Mastering work intake involves recognizing that it’s easy to say “ yes” and much harder to say “ no.”

Order or preorder your copy from

J Ross: https://bit.ly/474ul6G

Amazon (US): https://a.co/d/7nYupx5

For physical copies outside of the US and Canada:

UK and EU: https://www.eurospanbookstore.com/ 

For international orders outside of Europe: https://a.co/d/7nYupx5 (or the Amazon store for your country)

Note: The Publisher indicates that it takes a while for the physical copies to get to the distributors outside of the USA and Canada.