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I'm reading through "The Phoenix Project", and this is one of the items mentioned, is that the less idle time a resource has, the higher the work backlog (WIP).
by derekp7 8y ago
I'm reading through "The Phoenix Project", and this is one of the items mentioned, is that the less idle time a resource has, the higher the work backlog (WIP). Of course, in a factory setting (as presented in the book), I can see this working -- although you have an expensive machine, you aren't paying it by the hour to while it is idle. Of course, for devops work, if you don't want your human resources to be idle, then I could see scheduling easily-interruptible tasks (such as reading tech articles or HN) during idle periods, so that when a task is ready for you to work on you can jump right to it.
- amag 8y agoOr, seen from the other way, the higher the work backlog, the less idle time a resource has...
- tetha 8y agoThis is what we're doing. We're distinguishing project work, which requires longer and more constant focus on a problem and other, smaller stuff. For example, setting up configuration management for an entirely new application is a project. Writing and deploying an icinga check, a telegraf collector and such is smaller stuff. With this, we schedule some people to be on project duty and they shall not be interrupted. Other guys are on interrupt duty and tend to do tasks which just require an hour to half a day of attention so they can easily close something they're doing and jump on something urgent.