The Book of TameFlow: Theory of Constraints Applied to Knowledge-Work Management

by Steve Tendon

This book describes advanced applications of the TameFlow Approach. The TameFlow Approach is a pragmatic systems-thinking approach for creating breakthrough performance-innovation in knowledge-intensive digital-businesses. TameFlow is an original management paradigm that helps goal-oriented businesses to focus on the fewest things that make the greatest impact on performance, leading to happier people and higher profits, without compromising sustainability, quality or humanity. Reading this book, you will learn how to apply the Theory of Constraints to knowledge-work, and in particular to handle coordination, synchronization and prioritization in " PEST " environments, where you have multiple Projects or Products; multiple Events or deadlines; multiple Stakeholders; and multiple Teams. Focus is on producing business outcomes and customer value with tangible bottom line results. The TameFlow Approach provides business agility to change direction at speed and at scale by dramatically improving organizational performance beyond that of mainstream Agile or "agile-like" methods and frameworks ( Kanban , Scrum , SAFe , LeSS , Nexus , Scrum@Scale , Enterprise Scrum , etc.), and providing new means to tame the volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) of modern knowledge-work.

Genres: Nonfiction, Management

315 pages, Paperback

Published January 18, 2022

Reviews

[Denis Vasilev · Rating 5 out of 5]

Интересный подход к Теории ограничений систем, в применении к разработке ПО. Контринтуитивная идея - почему для максимальной производительности, при хорошо организованной работе многие люди должны ждать работы, а не быть "всегда загруженными"

[Matthew Hodge · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm alternating between giving this 4 or 5 stars. On the one hand, it's a piece of genius thinking. Steve Tendon has broken down the nature of complex work that happens in knowledge work and proposed a completely new way of thinking to fix the problem.

But by the same token, it requires a lot of understanding of graphs, charts, and metrics to see how it all pulls together. I suspect the reason that things like Agile don't get used in a lot of environments is that they have so many rituals and unique terms for things that it feels like learning a whole new language just to get a better way or doing the work you're already doing.

In other words, when you're already busy enough, how do you find time to learn a whole new system, implement the system and get everyone else on board with it?

So TameFlow, even though it is trying to be a better system than any of the current Agile systems, is still fairly complex for the average worker to get their head around, which might limit it's adoption.

Having said all of the above, I've joined Steve's online Circle group and I've told my CEO that I want to start us having discussions to talk through this material and how it might apply to our workflow, which I've never done for any other book about working. So that tells you something!

[Ivan Chernov · Rating 4 out of 5]

На данный момент, лучшая книга по проектированию процессов в разработке. Собирает лучшие принципы из kanban, agile и теории ограничений. Осмысляет их в рамках современных реалий и главное, выкидывает всё ненужное что было накоплено за года.

Примерный список вопросов, на которые отвечает книга:
- почему WIP - зло?
- почему сортировка задач по получаемой прибыли может её уменьшить?
- какие есть виды ограничений при работе с информацией?
- какие вам необходимы дашборды, чтобы вовремя отслеживать проекты?

Четвёрку ставлю потому, что примеры в книге даны довольно синтетические. То есть хотелось тоже самое, но на более прикладных примерах.

[Timur Batyrshin · Rating 4 out of 5]

First thing to keep in mind that is mostly an intro to the method but not the practical guidance.
While the book clearly depicts the idea of using TOC, DBR and CCPM for knowledge work there are many questions arise of practical nature. You'll have to figure out them yourselves during your journey. I heard rumors that there were quite a lot of practical examples in the predecessor, "Tame your workflow" by the same author.

Keeping that some lack of practicality aside the book is a great and easy read and is quite insightful on the ways to build delivery flow in knowledge heavy organization.