Making Work Visible

Author: Dominca DeGrandis
Reviewer: Akshay Hazare

In this timely book, IT time management expert Dominica DeGrandis reveals the real crime of the century—time theft, one of the most costly factors impacting enterprises in their day-to-day operations.
Through simple solutions that make work visible, DeGrandis helps people round up the five thieves of time and take back their lives with time-saving solutions. Chock-full of exercises, takeaways, real-world examples, colorful diagrams, and an easy-going writing style, readers will quickly learn effective practices to create high-performing workflows within an organization.

In Part 1 of the book, The author talks about the 5 Thieves of Time:

• Too much work-in-progress (wip)
  Trying to parallelize work or multitasking is not a beneficial approach as maintaing synchronisation leads to undue loss of time.
• Unknown Dependencies
  Always know beforehand the set of things you need to finish a task at hand.
• Unplanned Work
  Plan of action is the key to tackle any task as it keeps you in the right direction.
• Conflicting Priorities
  When handling a task ensure to priorities its components as it saves time over continuing from a checkpoint.
• Neglected Work
  Ensure that you understand the scope of the task at hand to avoid future surprises.

In Part 2 of the book, The author talks about How to expose Time Theft to optimize Workflow:

• Make Work Visible
  Here she talks about ensuring that all your tasks are well documented and clear to you.
• Ambush the Ringleader
  Always try to tackle the core(connective) task to multiple other tasks
• Exposed Dependencies
  Mark down clear dependecies i.e Tasks that are dependent on other tasks
• Committing the perfect crime - Unplanned Work
  Never approach your tasks without a plan of action as that can lead to confusion and chaos.
• Prioritize Prioritize Prioritize
  Always approach your tasks with decreasing order of priority.
• Preventing Negligence
  Ensure that critical tasks are not ignored and all work is chalked out effectively.

In Part 3 of the book, The author talks about How to use Metrics, Feedback and Circumstances to optimize Workflow:

• Treat Metrics as Money
  Metrics are ver important and must be expended miserly
• The time Thief o'gram
  Try new ways to visualize the time at disposal and tasks at hand
• Operations review
  Review a task before adding them to the completion bucket
• The art of the meeting
  Meeting are an important part of workflow and should be dealt in an organized fashion
• Beastly Practices
  All events at hand must be handled like a beast with complete attention paid to tasks at hand.

Conclusion: Dominica starts by exposing the five time thieves and detailing how they keep us busy and overcommited while allowing critical work to fall by the wayside. It is in this section that Dominica describes tech debt work (work that has accumulated due to short cuts, deferred maintenence, the passage of time, or other point in time decisions) as revenue protection.
For me, this was a criticial connection. In the DevOps and Digital Transformation discussion, we look at how we can relate our development and IT operations work to customer value. What we often have a hard time voicing is how to fit those tech debt tasks into that value stream. When we look at it from a perspective of revenue protection, (keeping services available, responsive, and secure helps keep customers ya know..), it becomes evident that those tasks need to be represented in the work we are doing.
Another major takeaway for me was in the focus on the metrics of the flow of work. Dominica dives in to a variety of metrics that can be gleaned from using Kanban and, more importantly, what those metrics mean for the flow of work through the organization.
I would most definitely recommend this book as it holds principles of time management which could be applied not only to the work life but also to private life for effective task/time management.