Boots on the ground
- Doing the hard work
and Limit work in progress -

Boots on the Ground - Doing the hard work and Limit work in progress

by Dirk Depré - October 14, 2022

Teams are not always able to completely deliver what they had committed to. Various reasons for this obviously but there is one that sticks. Work get stuck at a given moment because we don't have the knowledge, empowerment, technical skills or we are waiting for others to deliver and they weren't able to deliver in time.

Engineering stuff is complex and you aim to have as much power within you team to being able to deliver. Hello autonomy, but what do you do to gain the power and thus challenge your own status quo?

Pick you battles - dependency driven
If you are hyper dependent on another team and that team is for reasons known or unknown to you in a bad place, then why do you prioritise this kind of work when you expect things from that other team. Move away from that work and pick up work which you actually can deliver, within your own power. However, don't forget to follow up on expectations towards that 3rd party. The work is still important someday, right?

Do the hard work - knowledge and wisdom never came by doing nothing
If you don't have the ability or skills yet to perform certain work, work on it. The complexity of the work we do, pushes us towards embracing learning. Learning new skills will unlock your next level powers. How much have you invested lately in your skills?

Set boundaries to push yourself / Limit work in progress
Limit the work in progress. If the rule is that you can't pick up new work before other work is finished, than work harder on delivering the work in stead of keep on starting new work without finishing the other work first. Flow is achieved through stop starting and start finishing. But as a consequence of that rule, it also pushes you to really do the hard work work with the people that can get things to done.

So.. healthy teams do the hard work.
They push their own boundaries and will achieve flow.
Are you ready to push the boundaries?

Credits:

• Photo by Akhilesh Sharma on Unsplash

• Photo by Fitsum Admasu on Unsplash