This was the most glaring flaw of the post. They almost got there when they started talking about the “transaction costs” but failed to acknowledge idle times.

This was the most glaring flaw of the post. They almost got there when they started talking about the “transaction costs” but failed to acknowledge idle times. To drive this home to software development, if I’m blocked on a requirements clarification, awaiting permissions to a data source, or blocked by a bug in an external system it certainly doesn’t make sense for me to just do nothing. I should pick up another task and work on that. It’s going to be near impossible to substantially limit WIP below the level that ensures near fully committed personnel. That means that as external blockers go up, so will WIP. It’s important to try to fix those things causing blockers (better up front requirements, automated permission processes, etc…) but different teams and organizations will have different fundamental limits on being idled on projects. For some software product feature teams this can be kept very low- a strong requirements process is established, the data needed is consistent and owned by the team, and reliance on 3rd party systems is low. Teams dealing in enterprise IT systems (like mine) often can’t, as much as we seek to improve things, there is a degree of irreducible complexity.