Switchbacks are Beautifully Inefficient

Last year, Mike Strong, agile expert, introduced me to an agile activity well known as "The Name Game." I had always had a hunch that context switching was inefficient, but I had no idea just how inefficient it truly was.

METHOD 1

During the first round of "The Name Game" activity, one person (see "Rossi" below) was asked to write everyone's name onto an index card. Rossi was asked to write down one letter at a time on each index card before handing it back to its owner. As you can imagine, there was a lot of healthy pushing and letter yelling going on as people shoved their index cards into Rossi's hand to try and get their entire name written down as quickly and accurately as possible.

Using this method, on average, each individual got their full name written down on their index card in 58 seconds and it took Rossi approximately 70 seconds total to return everyone's index cards.

This method relied on a lot of communication and administration and forced Rossi to take orders rather than be autonomous. Everyone was a little irritated at how long it took to get something so simple completed. Rossi also seemed a bit stressed and prone to error, which may have contributed to the slower pace.

METHOD 2

During round two, Rossi was asked to write a person's full name down onto the index card before returning the card to its owner. Rossi was able to focus on one delivery at a time which meant that she wasn't stressed, could concentrate better and felt good about providing high quality service to each customer.

The results of method two were astounding. Each customer received their card with their full name written on it within 3-4 seconds and the entire process took only 20 seconds which means that the second method was over 3X faster! Productivity increased by 71 percent! And the speed at which customers received their deliveries was improved by 93 percent! With 70 seconds of time, in the first round, Rossi could only deliver 5 cards. Using the second method, Rossi could have delivered 15 cards.

To be effective for ourselves and others, it is crucial that we create space of uninterrupted time to start and finish tasks and projects.

To be effective for ourselves and others, it is crucial that we create space of uninterrupted time to start and finish tasks and projects. We need to proactively reduce analysis paralysis and quit spending so much time thinking about what should get done and just get to it.