Why don’t we just say No?

Abstract:

Ask any Ops team, “What prevents you from getting your work done?” Likely array of responses: Live issues, interruptions, conflicting priorities, or shifting priorities. There is always too much work to do.

This begs the question, why do people consistently take on more work than they have capacity to do? Why don’t we just say no?

This talk will explore why Ops teams take on too much work, and why we don’t hear agile development teams complaining about this topic as much.

We’ll look at how one Ops team did reduce their excessive workload and conclude with suggested experiments for improving the often absurd imbalance between Ops teams demand and capacity.

Speaker:

Dominica teaches organizations across the US and Europe on using Kanban to improve workflow and throughput. She is keen on providing visibility and transparency across teams to reveal mutually critical information. Dominica combines experience, practice and theory to help teams level up their capability.

Dominica is the developer of the Kanban for Devops board game simulation and a Kanban Coaching Professional with Lean Kanban University. She holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of Hawaii.

twitter: @dominicad