What is it? Direct the focus of optimization on work items, e.g. tasks, problems, process steps, instead of the people. That means metrics also need to focus on work items, not on people. Typical activities for managing flow are: visualize the work people do limit the work in progress (so you can see where items get stuck and have enough free resources to handle that exception in a constructive way) track how quick items go through the pipeline think about how to modify your process so that stuck items won’t get stuck again Why use it?

What is it? Instead of taking on all tasks that people hand to you as a person or representative of your team, you don’t accept new tasks unless you still have free capacity. Why use it? Usually people take on all new tasks that come in, especially when a task they work on is waiting on external input. Then suddenly 3 of these tasks can continue and the person doesn’t have the time to finish all of the same time.

What is it? An Opportunity Solution Tree is a visual aid that can help you find the best place to focus your team’s energies, whilst ensuring you consider enough opportunities. Opportunity solution trees bring transparency to the process and get the whole team to buy into the decisions being made and the solutions being tested. Here’s an example: Why use it? This practice is a great way to ensure a product team is taking the time to prioritize user needs and generate enough solutions to needs to broaden the potential for finding the best idea.

This practice is related to: Domain Driven Design. What is it? Event Modeling is a way to design a blueprint for an Information System of any size or scale. It is done in a way that allows the clearest communication of the system’s workings to the largest possible cross-section of roles in an organization. The system can be checked for completeness by following the single thread of data propagation through it.

What is proto-persona? A proto-persona is a description of the target users and audience of a product based on the assumptions of stakeholders. Creating this ad-hoc persona allows product teams to begin designing and building immediately without getting overly bogged down with the details of user behavior. Since these personas are developed using the preliminary knowledge and assumptions of stakeholders and team members, the persona should be updated with any new information or analysis gained during the course of the project.

What is it? Example mapping is a technique for fleshing out and gaining clarity around the acceptance criteria for a given story. It is based on the idea that multiple examples of specific cases convey information better than a single bad abstraction of a concept. When to use it? Example mapping should be used when you have the right people in the room to be able to explain business rules and example scenarios, and a technical team that can ask the right questions about those rules.