Flow and Pull - "Work flows, not people. Pull, don’t push."
Flash concepts
Push and Pull systems | Limit Work in Progress (WIP) | Kanban & flow metrics |
|---|---|---|
Use pull systems (like Kanban) to respect capacity and reduce overload. | Measure flow with lead time, WIP, and throughput. | Visualize work to uncover bottlenecks. |
Practices you can start to apply tomorrow
Step | Action items |
|---|---|
Understand your current workflow | Map out how a piece of work (like a user story or an IT request) goes from start to finish, and identify where it gets stuck or delayed. Then, find ways to remove those obstacles (perhaps through automation, clearer ownership, or eliminating unnecessary approvals). |
Adopt a pull system | By prioritizing and only pulling in a few work items at a time – for example, using a Kanban board where new tasks enter only when someone finishes their current task (thus limiting work-in-progress) |
Link to Metrics | Tie each change to a value metric (e.g. load time improvement, error rate reduction, user satisfaction score) so you can measure if value was actually delivered |
Tools and Templates
What | Why and where |
|---|---|
Kanban | Structure your visual board for flow. See. Template Library |
WIP tracker sheet | Understand multitasking and its costs (add link) |
Value Stream mapping | To visualize the end-to-end process and find waste. See Template Library |
Article | “Stop Starting, Start Finishing”? (add link) |
Check out how we can help | Checkout our trainings Community & Help |
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