The Operational Flow of TameFlow

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OPERATIONAL FLOW - How well are we delivering? The OPERATIONAL FLOW is the second of the four Flows of TameFlow. We manage operational flow with a data-driven approach. The key metric is the FLOW TIME (broadly speaking, the time from start to finish of any piece of work).

We use charts and diagrams to enable VISUAL MANAGEMENT, via: - Flow Time Distribution charts - Cumulative Flow Diagrams - Burn-up Charts - Fever Charts - Buffer Control Charts - Animated Bubble Fever Charts (For an example of the latter, see tameflow.com/blog/2014-11-25/visual-portfolio-management/ )

We break down the FLOW TIME into WAIT TIME and TOUCH TIME. TOUCH TIME is the time during which some activity is actually being performed on a work item. WAIT TIME is the time during which a work item is waiting for some worker or activity.

We care about FLOW EFFICIENCY. FLOW EFFICIENCY is the ratio between TOUCH TIME and FLOW TIME. FLOW EFFICIENCY provides far better performance than RESOURCE EFFICIENCY. Most companies are stuck in the RESOURCE EFFICIENCY paradigm. We go even further beyond FLOW EFFICIENCY.

By finding the CONSTRAINT we can pursue THROUGHPUT EFFICIENCY. The CONSTRAINT is colloquially known as "Herbie!" The CONSTRAINT is the part or step of the workflow that has the least capacity. THROUGHPUT EFFICIENCY provides far better performance than FLOW EFFICIENCY.

Finding the CONSTRAINT in a knowledge-work setting is non-trivial. The way we use FLOW METRICS is the key to finding the CONSTRAINT. Another key element is the use of LITTLE'S LAW. There are many inter-related aspects to this, which we will explore in other tweets.