Pure Waste

Questions of the week: Why can't we stop doing work that is pure waste or rework?

I write this article based on the insight of my conversation with my team in our monthly 1-on-1 call. I speak with each one of my team members. This article is a compilation of a whole week's takeaway. You can subscribe to the Building our Team newsletter (2000+ subscribers)

Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

We have hit some workload which was not anticipated, and this article is a part of this subseries where I have created a system to demonstrate how the system can solve a problem; the complete outline will be shared in the coming weeks. The name of the system is Pressure Point Syndrome.

This article addresses the answer to 1 question I have asked my team as a part of the system. I am picking a few interesting responses out of 90 from my team and sharing my 2 cents. The response is marked in bold below.

Before starting work on any task or any requirement, we should collectively discuss on it. Yet better, we should create some guidelines to avoid repeated mistakes or errors. A team meeting is the most wasteful time if it's only used for telling other people what to do. If decisions need to be made, then this could be a possible use of time. The team dynamics are such that only a few senior people can make strategic decisions; not all need to participate.

We failed to recognise our capabilities. I love the honesty. Our awareness is something that is a superpower. I firmly believe that we should double down on our strengths. Comparing a fish to how they climb a tree is a foolish act. We have our limitations, but complimenting them with one of the skills of teammates, technology, and tools makes us shine. We create value where no one can see it.

Few team members are new, and there is a high chance for rework. 2 steps back and three steps forward are something most people are afraid of. One should be on the training wheels as long as one is confident to work on the client's work. The inability to communicate this and do unnecessary rework is not helping to increase a person's skill. If you fear how others will think about you, you are already making losses for the company, so the measurement is already going on.

We are bad at analysing the impact of decisions we are making in the long term. This is like playing the game of wack-a-mole. The best way to improve is to practice it after the work is done and find all possible solutions to help it fixed permanently. Over time you will gain the ability to make better judgements and become better at making decisions. You should call for a full sprint as Analysis Sprint and walk through the bad sprint of the past 6 months and come up with solutions without the time pressure this time. If you can work on only 1 ticket, that's fine.

While working with manual testing is related to rework. There are already standard solutions related to it. Some low-hanging fruits include collaborating with the development team, Conducting a thorough review, Monitoring your test environment, Using a traceability matrix, Improving your communication, Avoiding multitasking, risk-based testing, Continuously improving your testing process and more.

Dont want to impact the live clients and don't want to get any bugs from the live client. This is a valid reason to rework and avoid potential risks. This questions our robustness of code, infra of automation testing, the code review process, code merge process, impact analysis and others. We will still have to do some rework, but the ability to do it only once and automate it for the next time is the only way to get out of the rat race.

Because we didn't check if this work was previously done or not. I am unsure why we would not check if that saves 4-8 hours of rework. This is another example of a lack of professional behaviour if there are some activities outside our standard operating procedures, we should add them. We should also take responsibility and ownership of 30 minutes of action that has the potential to save a full day of work.

The problem we have as a team is not saying 'NO'. If any senior assigns a task that is pure waste or rework, we say yes and start working on it. This is very interesting and will be a bold move by the juniors. This is a valid point, and we always talk about how transparent our culture is. This should not be challenging for the junior if they think the task is reworked. This saves the entire team a lot of work and frustration.

I feel that the team tends to underestimate tasks which in turn overwhelms them, which then leads to shabby work that will raise issues in the future. Wow, this one is bleeding us the most. It makes us less money, underserves our client and potentially damages the team morale. People will get more frustrated, work quality will reduce, and people will leave us. Even estimating more means we are not getting more projects is better than doing projects at losses because even charity cannot be sustainable if they keep making losses every year.

Those were the 9 points for this question I picked, and I hope this helps your team as well. I have been critical in this article, but the fact is that the pressure point has stopped the team from focusing on learning about systems in our culture call, which is a long-term loss for the company. Also, to do a short fix, we have to ask for more help, hire interns and do some free work for clients. This takes a hit to our profits.

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