- You know, what I have been doing recently was mostly convincing business not to start a particular project or to start it later. It took me a lot of time - he said, having in mind it was a loss of time.
- That's great - I said. - I think it's one of the most important things any leader should do, especially when working in a high pressure environment. As Steve Jobs said one time: the most important tool to improve programmers productivity is reducing number of features they have to implement.
It's the most common disease software teams have to deal with. It's quite common that a few projects are run in the same time and then another one is added to the stream. All Kanban and Lean practitioners will tell you it is a waste. And it really is. Don't you believe? Try Knibberg's Multitasking Name Game. Play it with your business and then discuss what can you learn from it.
(Picture from Multitasking Name Game manual).
