Idle Work vs. Idle Workers
I recently read Essential Scrum by Kenneth Rubin, an excellent overview book of Scrum. One notable principle Rubin taught is to “Focus on Idle Work, Not Idle Workers” (Rubin 51). Traditional thinking says that if we hire someone to do a certain job description, we expect them to do such work 100% of the time. If they are not being utilized 100% of the time on a certain product/project, we can throw them on another team to ensure 100% worker utilization. This leads to better business results, right?
It may help the manager sleep at night, but it creates a bigger problem than idle workers.
Idle Work
Rubin defines idle work as work that we want to do but can’t do because something is preventing us. He uses a 4x100 meter relay to illustrate his point. In a relay, there are lots of idle workers. Three out of the four runners are not being utilized 100%! So, let’s have them run another race (start/work on another project) while they wait. The problem with this is that when the baton is ready to be passed, the runner is not there. He is off on some other race. “Hold on!” He shouts from the other race. “I’ll get to this as soon as I finish my leg of the race here.” Meanwhile, the baton (our product) is sitting on the ground idle, and the competition is running by.
Within companies, this problem can scale. Employees are not being utilized 100%, so we add them to different teams, start new initiatives, etc. I recently heard a story of a consultant that helped a company with over 180 simultaneous initiatives going on, and over half did not even align with their top business objectives! The company was severely struggling to ship. The batons were merely inching around the track.
So if we shouldn’t think about worker utilization, what should we focus on?
Focus on the Baton
An important Scrum value to remember is focus. A team (more than a group of people who do some work together) needs to remain focused on achieving their sprint goals and, ultimately, their product goal. Focus keeps the baton moving. Leadership must remain focused on getting the baton across the finish line, not if the runners are running 100% of the time or not. The team needs to ship the increment to (in)validate their assumptions and deliver value to their users. Removing impediments that hinder the team from delivering and ensuring teams are cross-functional should be some of leadership’s top priorities. If teams have to wait for other teams to work on something, the solution is not to move the team that is waiting to another initiative but to ensure that the team has no dependencies/impediments so that the baton is never dropped. We don’t send runners away to different races but remove the hurdles in their way.
So, focus on getting the baton across the finish line. Focus on the completion of sprint goals and, ultimately, the product goal. And more, focus on ensuring the increment is valuable and useful once it is shipped.
What’s your experience? Have you been in a situation like the story mentioned above? Have you experienced a work culture where there was a lack of focus? Or maybe a culture that was highly focused? What was that like?