Review

Félix rating:
👍

(p. 1) The five thieves of time:
- Too much work in progress (WIP)
- Unknown dependencies (something you didn’t know needs to happen before you finish)
- Unplanned work (interruptions at the worst moment)
- Conflicting priorities (tasks that compete with each other)
- Neglected work (partially completed work)
(p. 9) It can take up to 20 minutes to get back to a previous thinking spot after an interruption.
(p. 10) The WIP limit is what allows you to say “No, there is no capacity to take on more work right now.”
(p. 10) Reducing WIP is liberating (not limiting!) The right amount of WIP allows us to maintain a healthy amount of work.
(p. 90) It doesn’t matter how big or small something is when you can only truly focus on one thing at a time.
(p. 102) The tasks in the backlog are options, they may never get done. But once work passes the line of commitment (i.e. the ticket is moved to the board), that explicitly signals it has been prioritized and is moving forward. By that logic, items in the board should never go back to the backlog.
(p. 109) To make neglected work obvious, flag work items that haven’t moved or been updated within a certain number of days.
(p. 134) The more WIP there is in the pipeline, the longer things take.
(p. 144) Generate a Time Thief ‘O Gram by tagging your tickets if they have one of these thieves:
- unplanned work
- unknown dependencies
- conflicting priorities
- neglected work

I exceptionally made a video summary where I attempt to explain my favorite passages from the book, you may watch it here .