How to Slow Down Your Team (and Deliver Faster)

Is your team in need of a little improvement? Are they getting a little stale? Are you looking for a way to bring their performance “to the next level?” Well, maybe you should slow it down.

Oh I know, those other consultants will tell you that they can speed up your team. It’s the siren song of the wishful manager, “Speed my team up: faster!” But I’m here to tell you they’ve got it all wrong.

let me ask you this:When you get a flat tire in your car, do you speed up? No!If there is a burning smell coming from the oven, do you heat it up? No!So if you see your teams start to slow down, why on earth would you try to make them go faster?

Let’s face it, when teams slow down there is usually a damn good reason. So rather than speeding up, perhaps it’s time to slow down, pull over, and take a look under the hood.

How do you slow down? Nobody really teaches that. Everybody is so focused on speeding up they seem to have forgotten how to slow down. Here are my top 10 ways to slow down your team (and hopefully address your problem):

1. Apply a WIP Limit

2. 1 piece flow

3. A more rigorous definition of done

4. Pair programming

5. Promiscuous programming

6. Continuous Integration

7. Continuous Delivery

8. Acceptance Test Driven Development

9. Spend more time on impediments

10. Hack the org

Taking time to implement any one of these things is almost guaranteed to slow you down. That’s a good thing, because your team probably needs to pull over to the side of the metaphorical road and repair a few things.

#improvement #slowingdown