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Tame Your Work Flow
This book is about advanced applications of the TameFlow Approach. The TameFlow Approach is a high performance enterprise management and governance approach that will dramatically improve planning, execution and delivery while dealing with multiple projects, events, stakeholders and teams.
The book will describe how using the TameFlow Approach will result in better bottom line results, faster time to market, less work, better predictability, happier employees, delighted clients and satisfied stakeholders.
The book will introduce you to the fundamental ideas of operational flow management and constraints management.
It continues where all the mainstream "agile" or "agile-like" approaches, (like: Kanban, Kanban Method, Agile, Scrum, SAFe, LeSS, Nexus, Scrum At Scale, Enterprise Scrum, etc.) become insufficient. Focus is squarely on producing tangible bottom line results for businesses, all the while addressing the issues of coordination, synchronization and prioritization of multiple projects, with multiple events (i.e. deadlines), multiple stakeholders, and employing multiple teams.
In this book you will discover latest operational flow management ideas that were the basis of successful cases of the TameFlow Approach, since 2003 across numerous industries.
After reading the book, you will be equipped to create the conditions for enterprise level flow, whereby your organization's performance will increase in unprecedented ways.
The book will describe how using the TameFlow Approach will result in better bottom line results, faster time to market, less work, better predictability, happier employees, delighted clients and satisfied stakeholders.
The book will introduce you to the fundamental ideas of operational flow management and constraints management.
It continues where all the mainstream "agile" or "agile-like" approaches, (like: Kanban, Kanban Method, Agile, Scrum, SAFe, LeSS, Nexus, Scrum At Scale, Enterprise Scrum, etc.) become insufficient. Focus is squarely on producing tangible bottom line results for businesses, all the while addressing the issues of coordination, synchronization and prioritization of multiple projects, with multiple events (i.e. deadlines), multiple stakeholders, and employing multiple teams.
In this book you will discover latest operational flow management ideas that were the basis of successful cases of the TameFlow Approach, since 2003 across numerous industries.
After reading the book, you will be equipped to create the conditions for enterprise level flow, whereby your organization's performance will increase in unprecedented ways.
493 pages, ebook
Published August 10, 2019
4 people want to read
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December 14, 2019
Having previously read Hyper-Productive Knowledge Work Performance from the same author my expectations on this book were high. Tame Your Work Flow picks up where the Hyper book ended, which is a method called TameFlow-Kanban that is claimed to be an improvement over the conventional Kanban method.
The first book was published back in 2015, and what was originally a method has now evolved into a holistic approach to guiding organizations towards high performance. Tendon and Doiron term it the TameFlow Approach. And the choice of words is careful here, as they want to set themselves apart from the myriad of methodologies, frameworks and whatnot that flood the consultancy space.
But this is not just because it is convenient to them from a marketing perspective. Tame Your Work Flow introduces a holistic attempt to gear knowledge-work organizations to high performance. Particularly in the most challenging contexts, of which the authors refer to using the acronyms PEST (multiple Projects, Events, Events and Teams) and VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity).
By holistic I mean using Systems Thinking to look at the organization from four different prisms: operational, financial, informational and psychological. These are the four flows that, when tamed, will set you on the path of high performance. To do so, authors Steve Tendon and Daniel Doiron have masterfully decoded Eli Goldratt's Theory of Constraints body of knowledge to then apply it in complex settings involving multiple teams and value streams.
It is worth noting the teachings of Dr. Goldratt, because the implications are huge. Already revealed in The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement, each business exists for a reason. And that reason is its Goal, which to put it simply is to make money. The rate at which a business can make money is limited by its constraint, so any improvements not aimed at the constraints are futile and waste of time.
It is this Goal that should inspire employees to work harmoniously together, and once known, help to foster the Community of Trust and Unity of purpose foundational patterns (courtesy of Jim Coplien).
Finding your goal is established as a prerequisite if you want to truly live up to the TameFlow approach.
After this, we should keep an eye on four different flows in the organization. Namely the operational, informational, financial and psychological. It is of interest the operational flow for this review. I believe this book must be the most faithful translation of Goldratt's Theory of Constraints to knowledge work. Different methods are described on how to find the constraint in the work process. And also how to limit work in process and subordinate other teams to the constraint so that multitasking and waste are avoided. If you're familiar with the subject I'm pretty sure you have thought about the5 focussing steps.
Regarding the financial and informational flows, well... Goldratt's Throughput Accounting and Critical Chain Project Management buffers are the tools of choice here.
But this is also a practical book, including many illustrative examples and even a simulation game for you to try (in the operational aspect).
If I had to make a criticism about this book that is the constant bashing on Agile throughout the book. Time and again, superiority of TameFlow over Agile and Kanban is claimed in almost every chapter. In my opinion it took away from the focus and it is the main reason why I'm giving it 3 stars instead of 4.
The first book was published back in 2015, and what was originally a method has now evolved into a holistic approach to guiding organizations towards high performance. Tendon and Doiron term it the TameFlow Approach. And the choice of words is careful here, as they want to set themselves apart from the myriad of methodologies, frameworks and whatnot that flood the consultancy space.
But this is not just because it is convenient to them from a marketing perspective. Tame Your Work Flow introduces a holistic attempt to gear knowledge-work organizations to high performance. Particularly in the most challenging contexts, of which the authors refer to using the acronyms PEST (multiple Projects, Events, Events and Teams) and VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity).
By holistic I mean using Systems Thinking to look at the organization from four different prisms: operational, financial, informational and psychological. These are the four flows that, when tamed, will set you on the path of high performance. To do so, authors Steve Tendon and Daniel Doiron have masterfully decoded Eli Goldratt's Theory of Constraints body of knowledge to then apply it in complex settings involving multiple teams and value streams.
It is worth noting the teachings of Dr. Goldratt, because the implications are huge. Already revealed in The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement, each business exists for a reason. And that reason is its Goal, which to put it simply is to make money. The rate at which a business can make money is limited by its constraint, so any improvements not aimed at the constraints are futile and waste of time.
It is this Goal that should inspire employees to work harmoniously together, and once known, help to foster the Community of Trust and Unity of purpose foundational patterns (courtesy of Jim Coplien).
Finding your goal is established as a prerequisite if you want to truly live up to the TameFlow approach.
After this, we should keep an eye on four different flows in the organization. Namely the operational, informational, financial and psychological. It is of interest the operational flow for this review. I believe this book must be the most faithful translation of Goldratt's Theory of Constraints to knowledge work. Different methods are described on how to find the constraint in the work process. And also how to limit work in process and subordinate other teams to the constraint so that multitasking and waste are avoided. If you're familiar with the subject I'm pretty sure you have thought about the5 focussing steps.
Regarding the financial and informational flows, well... Goldratt's Throughput Accounting and Critical Chain Project Management buffers are the tools of choice here.
But this is also a practical book, including many illustrative examples and even a simulation game for you to try (in the operational aspect).
If I had to make a criticism about this book that is the constant bashing on Agile throughout the book. Time and again, superiority of TameFlow over Agile and Kanban is claimed in almost every chapter. In my opinion it took away from the focus and it is the main reason why I'm giving it 3 stars instead of 4.
Displaying 1 of 1 review