Just before the summer break, a selection of Agile frontrunners in the marketing and communications domain participated in a Flowlab simulation to verify if the simulation is applicable for departments and teams in our line of work. The answer is a wholehearted ‘Yes’.
The general practice of marketing & communications is that the workpressure is always high, while our clients can experience slow and late delivery.
During the first round of the simulation, we learned that this is a result of the desire to keep the professionals 100% working. This principle provides so much input of work to the system, that a massive workload is easily created. Certainly when blockers arise as well. New work gets added to the system, up to the point the system gets jammed. This makes all parties involved stressed, restless and unsatisfied. The simulation provided clear insights in the ineffectiveness of this way of working.
In the second round of the simulation, we did not work according to the availability of professionals, but with a limit on the Work in Progress (WIP). This created rest in the system: a constant flow of work was immediately apparent. A blocker also enforces collaboration as a result of the WIP limit. This way of working made the participants in the simulation experience relieve and even happiness.
The fact that the simulation is usable at various levels of experience, makes this tool very applicable for professionals outside the IT-domain. As a community, we will work together with board member / agile coach Koen De Keersmaecker and Flowlab developer Patrick Steyeart to see how we can get the simulation closer to the day-to-day marketing and communication practice.
More information on the activities of the Agile Consortium Marketing & Communications chapter or want to become a member? Please contact Marielle at marielle.roozemond[@]agilecommunicatie.nl.