Go with the FLOW

In graduate school, I was introduced to the thought leadership of Eli Goldratt after being assigned to read his revolutionary business management books: “The Goal”, “Critical Chain” and “It’s Not Luck”. Over the course of my professional career in healthcare, I have put these Critical Chain and FLOW concepts into practice with remarkable results delivering projects, products, and implementing change. The key to optimizing throughput for achieving results is understanding how to effectively exploit constraints through robust planning and proper sequencing of work. In this blog post, I will share two real-world relatable examples to explain and highlight the importance of maximizing FLOW. In the next edition of my blog which will drop next week, we will dive into the importance of sequencing work, which is an enabler of flow.

Periodically, my husband will need me to help him out by picking up my stepson from school in the “car rider” line at dismissal. The school is in a Louisville residential area with limited access to parking. I am impressed with the efficiency of their “system” and “process” for optimizing the FLOW of traffic after school dismissal for school buses and cars.

All students are dismissed at the same time (2:20 p.m.) in three patterns by walking, riding a school bus or being picked up as a car rider. During dismissal hours, the flow of traffic is one way into the school parking lot for entry and exit. All school buses are lined up in the parking lot where students load their assigned buses that exit in succession starting in rows from furthest lane to the nearest lane. After school buses have successfully left the parking lot, cars are ushered in by school staff who direct drivers to line up into designated lanes. Once all lanes have been filled completely with parked cars, students are allowed to safely approach and enter their car where the car is then dismissed in succession by lane starting exit line from right to left. If a student is not paying attention or delayed getting into their car, then the driver must exit with the flow of the cars in their lane, before circling the neighborhood to reenter car rider line. This “business rule” avoids creating bottlenecks or delays in the FLOW of traffic. Within minutes, approximately fifty cars FLOW through the parking lot at dismissal to pick up middle school students

Since the school is in a historic neighborhood, there is no real estate available to add more car parking capacity in terms of square footage. Yet, the school has done an excellent job in exploiting a parking capacity constraint by engineering a repeatable process for how cars will enter/exit. By adding and enforcing the common rule, bottlenecks are avoided which minimizes impact to downstream cars when students are delayed getting in their respective cars.

Next, let’s look at a fast-food chicken drive-thru comparison that illustrates the power of FLOW, which is enabled by managing the queue intake. In Kentucky, we love our chicken! Despite a common misconception, locals are not necessarily huge fans of “Kentucky Fried Chicken”. And it could be argued by many locals that the <real> fried chicken is found at Indi’s Restaurant.

During peak dinner periods, the line at Indi’s is often ten to twelve cars snaking around the parking lot with upwards twenty-to-thirty-minute wait in drive-thru despite having a ready pre-prepared inventory of their spicy, fresh fried chicken and potato wedges sitting under warming lamps. Orders are placed at a call box that is positioned about five cars behind the pick-up window. Food orders are not packaged until the customer payment is successfully made, which sometimes takes several minutes for the clerk to process payment, prepare drinks and package the order at the pick-up window. Let’s do the math – six lead cars’ times three minutes each car processing at pick-up window equals a fifteen minute wait from the time the order is placed at the stationary call box.

Unlike Indi’s, Chick-Fil-A has engineered and revolutionized a lean, fast-food drive-thru process that maximizes FLOW with optimized throughput creating efficiency resulting in high demand for their product since customers can complete their drive-thru order and receive their food within minutes. As a periodic customer at Chick-Fil-A, I would argue that their pleasant staff demeanor, level of detail and attention to customer service with high food quality could suffer but would still minimize the impact to their drive-thru sales because they have cultivated the art of convenience by giving customers back the most precious commodity and constraint => their time.

Chick-Fil-A offers multiple drive-thru lanes during peak hours of demand. And much like the middle school process, there is one-way entry and exit for drive-thru guiding cars into lanes using barriers. Even though each lane may have six cars in front, the queue kicks off much earlier than Indi’s because Chick-Fil-A staff are mobile with flexibility to move backwards (as necessary) in the line to start orders early and process payment using handheld devices. This enables the staff adequate time to prepare orders, which are generally waiting as soon as the customer pulls up to the window to pick up their packaged food order. This is a common experience but there are exceptions. My husband and I once grabbed Chick-Fil-A in a Southern Indiana drive-thru because we were short on time. Their handheld payment processing devices were not operable. Despite having an ability to take the order, payment processing was deferred to the pick-up window, which added time…and it took three times longer than we were accustomed to waiting in line for drive-thru leading to frustration since the experience caused us to be late for an appointment.

As an Agile practitioner, Kanban is one of my favorite tools for not only visualizing the work for the team but also managing FLOW of the queue. WIP (work in progress) limits define the quantity of work items for each “lane”, which are a powerful enabler of FLOW. I have had repeated success when using Kanban WIP limits as a coach, ScrumMaster and RTE (Release Train Engineer). If work is bottlenecked, then team swarms to remediate the bottleneck as necessary to resume the flow of work through the queue. If work is not complete, WIP limits are honored by restricting the start of new work before work items are complete and advance to the next phase represented by a subsequent Kanban lane.

Professionally, I have relied on Kanban as a tool to enable FLOW in various roles. As a project manager, Kanban is a great tool to help plan and facilitate with a team the breakdown of project work into iterative planned phases. As a Scaled Agile implementation leader certified as Practice Consultant (SPC), I teach Kanban as a foundational practice for all Agile teaming configurations at scale – team, train, solution and portfolio. Check out this SAFe® article for “Applying Kanban in SAFe®” https://v5.scaledagileframework.com/applying-kanban-in-safe/ .

Flow, queue management and “Kanban” have practical life skills beyond professional Agile teaming, technology product development or corporate methods/practices. As a parent, I have learned over the years that children become overwhelmed when there is “too much” going on at one time because it is difficult to focus on priorities and finish a task/chore/assignment that has started. This is a common challenge with people who are neurodivergent and struggle with executive processing limitations associated with learning differences like ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). In a future blog, I will share more information on how I have successfully repurposed Agile practices/tools like Definition of Done (DoD) and Kanban in my personal life to help the people I love who struggle with ADHD lacks of focus and delays in completing tasks.