Wim:
00:00:00
so definition of work in progress, um, which we call WIP for short, W I P.
Wim:
00:00:05
So WIP is the number of tasks currently being worked on at any stage from start
Wim:
00:00:10
to finish, initiation to completion.
Wim:
00:00:12
And an example of that is if you look at manufacturing, vehicles started
Wim:
00:00:16
in production but not complete.
Wim:
00:00:18
, tickets started but not complete in our MSP, projects started but not
Wim:
00:00:21
complete, and you can break it down.
Wim:
00:00:23
There can be WIP at individual stages as well.
Wim:
00:00:26
So in the manufacturing, you say, hey, car is waiting to be painted.
Wim:
00:00:29
That's work in progress.
Wim:
00:00:31
And if you look at tickets, maybe they're waiting on scheduling or waiting on a
Wim:
00:00:34
final review by a manager or by billing.
Wim:
00:00:36
That's also WIP at individual stages, so we wanna reduce the whip in the system
Wim:
00:00:40
and then reduce WIP at each stage as well.
Steve:
00:00:42
Now, how do we calculate work in progress?
Steve:
00:00:46
Is that another one that's as simple as counting?
Wim:
00:00:50
Just counting.
Wim:
00:00:51
Yeah.
Wim:
00:00:51
That's why with Kanban it's just very, very simple.
Wim:
00:00:54
'cause you've, you've got like your sticky notes on the whiteboard or your cards
Wim:
00:00:57
on a Trello board or Microsoft planner board, and you're just counting them.
Wim:
00:01:01
It's a very simple, we're not looking at the hours, not looking at story
Wim:
00:01:05
points, just the number of items in that column, in that system.
Steve:
00:01:10
Now, is this another one that we should be monitoring daily?
Wim:
00:01:13
This should be at least, I, I would say minimum daily on this one.
Wim:
00:01:16
And in some, some areas it might even be hourly or per minute.
Wim:
00:01:20
If you look at a, at a help desk and you've got a team of 10 people and
Wim:
00:01:23
you have, yeah, hundreds of tickets going through every day, whatever
Wim:
00:01:27
metric is, it could, it could spike, it could get really busy.
Wim:
00:01:31
So you can look at the end of the day and like, hey, it's under control now.
Wim:
00:01:33
Um, if you look at a throat today as well as staying within the WIP limits,
Wim:
00:01:38
um, so that's the concept of as well as, as well as, as well as knowing what
Wim:
00:01:43
is the ideal WIP limit and visualizing that, that are we over that limit?
Wim:
00:01:50
Um, so, in a help desk, let's say you're in progress ticket, tickets, it should
Wim:
00:01:55
be like maybe one or two per person.
Wim:
00:01:57
Because we want to get to single piece flow where you start a ticket,
Wim:
00:02:00
do the work, do your time entry in real time, and it moves forward.
Wim:
00:02:04
It doesn't come back to you, it's just you're done with it, on to
Wim:
00:02:07
the next one, grab the next one.
Wim:
00:02:08
A prioritized list of tickets, you're not having to think about what to
Wim:
00:02:11
grab, it's already been prioritized.
Wim:
00:02:13
Grab it, single piece flow on to the next one.
Wim:
00:02:15
And so that should be monitored.
Wim:
00:02:17
If it's, if somebody's getting a lot of phone calls and getting interrupted, we
Wim:
00:02:21
want to be on that and how do we get that whip back down, how do we redistribute
Wim:
00:02:25
it, can we protect that person so they can focus on the task at hand, how do we
Wim:
00:02:29
design it so that they're never having to jump between five or ten tickets that
Wim:
00:02:33
they've started and haven't finished.\
Steve:
00:02:35
Now, is this another one where upper management should be
Steve:
00:02:38
reviewing or should the entire service desk be reviewing?
Wim:
00:02:42
Teams should review that, managers should be looking at it,
Wim:
00:02:45
it should be, everyone should be, should be looking at this, the
Wim:
00:02:48
individual is looking at their whip.
Wim:
00:02:50
and asking for help, but in their daily team huddles, they'll be
Wim:
00:02:55
looking at that and realizing, hey, we're over the limit here, or we're
Wim:
00:02:59
at risk of going over the limit.
Wim:
00:03:00
How can we get one or two of these things done and move forward?
Wim:
00:03:04
What are we waiting on?
Wim:
00:03:05
What's blocked?
Wim:
00:03:06
Can we redistribute it?
Wim:
00:03:07
Um, so you get a lot of strategies to reduce, uh, work in progress,
Wim:
00:03:11
like employee cross training so that people have multiple skills
Wim:
00:03:14
so they can take on varying tasks.
Wim:
00:03:16
And I've seen that in, in my teams, other MSPs might have a team of five and
Wim:
00:03:20
everyone's kind of doing their, their own specialty and they can't really
Wim:
00:03:23
help each other or they're scared to touch other people's tickets over time.
Wim:
00:03:27
So this is part of Agile thinking is having the team to have.
Wim:
00:03:31
All the skills so they can grab pretty much any ticket.
Wim:
00:03:34
So somebody's on vacation, or sick, or just busy, somebody else can just
Wim:
00:03:38
pick up that ticket and keep going on, going, uh, working on it, getting it
Wim:
00:03:42
done without losing a whole lot of time.
Wim:
00:03:44
So that's one strategy.
Wim:
00:03:46
Using focus blocks can really help.
Wim:
00:03:48
You might have certain times of the week or the day where you're in D& D mode.
Wim:
00:03:53
So you're not going to get barraged with your Slack or Teams notifications,
Wim:
00:03:57
interruptions, those proverbial quick questions, which are never quick,
Wim:
00:04:00
and they take 20 minutes, and then it takes another 20 minutes back
Wim:
00:04:03
to get back to what you're doing.
Wim:
00:04:05
Getting people into focus mode of one at a time, do the work onto the next.
Wim:
00:04:09
Maybe not 40 hours a week, but a good part of the week.
Wim:
00:04:12
And definitely like a service coordinator, service delivery manager can play a key
Wim:
00:04:17
role in this, is watching it and kind of being like an air traffic controller.
Wim:
00:04:21
We don't want to be micro managing people, we don't want to be scheduling
Wim:
00:04:24
their calendar, but prioritizing the work and redistributing as required.
Wim:
00:04:28
Or maybe scheduling a huddle saying, hey, I see you're struggling on this.
Wim:
00:04:32
Or you mentioned you're stuck, let's grab two or three people and just,
Wim:
00:04:35
let's quickly huddle just on this ticket and get it, get it rolling.
Wim:
00:04:39
I'm actually seeing this in my Windows MSP Kirchhoff
Wim:
00:04:42
Technologies, is our WIP is so low.
Wim:
00:04:45
And that our response time is just amazing, getting stuff done,
Wim:
00:04:50
like, the backlogs are so low.
Wim:
00:04:52
And because we've taken this focus on WIP, with the Kanban visualization,
Wim:
00:04:56
with TopLeft, but just the culture, people working together, the daily
Wim:
00:05:00
huddles, the managers stepping in to get stuff unblocked, is, um, we're
Wim:
00:05:04
seeing the backlogs low, which means our lead time is less, people submit
Wim:
00:05:07
a ticket, it's not going to sit there for a week or two weeks, we're on it.
Wim:
00:05:11
Whether they're asking for a new user, a new computer, we
Wim:
00:05:13
can jump on it right away.
Wim:
00:05:15
So huge there and that's helped with client satisfaction, clients are happy
Wim:
00:05:19
giving us reviews, giving us more project work, um, our CSAT surveys
Wim:
00:05:25
are all like super high, we're using Kruhu on the ticket completion,
Wim:
00:05:29
they're all smiley faces, and we get reviews and testimonials there.
Wim:
00:05:33
Um, so it's been transformational is actually committing to do
Wim:
00:05:37
it with this flow mentality can ben thinking in the MSP.
Wim:
00:05:41
And our dispatcher is got capacity, she could probably manage double
Wim:
00:05:48
the number of technicians and tickets because she's not scheduling
Wim:
00:05:52
tickets, it's just prioritizing.
Wim:
00:05:54
So we're saving time.
Wim:
00:05:55
Clients are happy, teams are happier.
Wim:
00:05:57
Our WIP is so much better.
Wim:
00:05:59
Sorry, our mental health is so much better.
Wim:
00:06:01
People used to feel overwhelmed because they would have 15 tickets that they've
Wim:
00:06:04
started and they're feeling unproductive, not contributing, not doing a good job.
Wim:
00:06:09
And so now they're all feeling in control.
Wim:
00:06:11
They're feeling way more productive.
Wim:
00:06:13
They've got a manageable workload.
Wim:
00:06:15
They're clear on what's going on.
Wim:
00:06:16
So it's helped their profitability, the clients, revenue,
Wim:
00:06:20
mental health, everywhere.
Steve:
00:06:22
Now, what kind of misconceptions or mistakes, , will
Steve:
00:06:26
MSPs make when considering WIP...
Wim:
00:06:29
I think one is looking at this as an average.
Wim:
00:06:32
Like, hey, my team's okay because we allow like three tickets per person.
Wim:
00:06:36
And we've got a team of 10 and we're, we're under 30.
Wim:
00:06:40
But if you actually drill into it, most of the team has one
Wim:
00:06:42
ticket, but one guy's got 10 or 15.
Wim:
00:06:44
And that's, that's going to be your bottleneck.
Wim:
00:06:47
Um, so that's, we've got to look at per person, how are they doing with
Wim:
00:06:51
the WIP, but then as a team, that maybe the limit shouldn't have been
Wim:
00:06:53
30, maybe it should have been 20 or 15.
Wim:
00:06:56
And I emphasize a team based approach to it, of getting that WIP down,
Wim:
00:07:00
getting the throughput up, because the client doesn't care who's
Wim:
00:07:02
doing it, they just want it done.
Wim:
00:07:05
So that's, we can optimize.
Wim:
00:07:07
For person, let's look at the work.
Wim:
00:07:09
Focus on the work and on the system and less on the people.
Wim:
00:07:12
And to have the people come around the work to get it done, which maybe
Wim:
00:07:17
requires a bit of help or having a manager or another senior technician
Wim:
00:07:21
come in to escalate that and get it done.
Wim:
00:07:23
Having the team on the work, getting the, keeping the whip down.
Wim:
00:07:26
I think some people are measuring it, but they don't get some
Wim:
00:07:29
of the thinking behind it.
Wim:
00:07:31
Um, to talk about that here is, you can have all the tools, all the
Wim:
00:07:34
dashboards, but if the mentality, the team culture is not there, and they're
Wim:
00:07:37
not understanding this flow thinking to start to finish and reducing WIP.
Wim:
00:07:41
Um, that's going to be a huge issue.
Wim:
00:07:42
So, I advocate for every MSP to have at least one person who becomes the
Wim:
00:07:47
flow master, who gets the principles, who's driving the culture, who's
Wim:
00:07:50
training the team on the concepts, the methodology, showing why it's important,
Wim:
00:07:56
running these huddles, holding people accountable, creating the culture
Wim:
00:08:00
where everyone's contributing to it, so that if the huddle master is not
Wim:
00:08:03
there, that they're still having those conversations and still working together.
Wim:
00:08:06
And then some other traps is they're not agreed on, like, what
Wim:
00:08:09
are the steps in the process?
Wim:
00:08:10
Um, because the simple of a process could be you've got your
Wim:
00:08:14
backlog, you've got what you're doing right now, and what's done.
Wim:
00:08:17
But breaking it down with a few more steps could help, like, maybe
Wim:
00:08:20
you've got the triage step, or maybe a manager needs to scope out
Wim:
00:08:24
the ticket before it's handed off.
Wim:
00:08:25
Um, there's different steps in there, is what agree on the steps, and some
Wim:
00:08:29
people aren't, it's kind of a best effort, somebody's personal judgment.
Wim:
00:08:35
Do we want to agree on how we handle the work?
Wim:
00:08:37
What does done mean?
Wim:
00:08:38
A lot of people don't know what done means on a ticket.
Wim:
00:08:41
So they're completing it, they think they're done, and then it gets reopened.
Wim:
00:08:45
So if you can agree on what is the handoff criteria from one step to
Wim:
00:08:47
the other, that's going to help.
Wim:
00:08:49
with the work in progress because it's not coming back
Wim:
00:08:53
and they're not doing too much.
Wim:
00:08:54
You've got to agree on how you prioritize.
Wim:
00:08:56
Some people are using the priorities in ConnectWise or Autotask.
Wim:
00:08:59
Other people are using some other field or another board or assigning it to somebody.
Wim:
00:09:03
You've got to agree on how you're prioritizing it so they're
Wim:
00:09:06
clear on what to be doing next.
Wim:
00:09:08
So yeah, education ultimately, awareness, building that
Wim:
00:09:11
culture for high performance.
Wim:
00:09:12
Flow
Steve:
00:09:13
Bigger picture, what other metrics should MSPs looking at
Steve:
00:09:18
alongside WIP to get a more, I guess, holistic view of their MSP?
Wim:
00:09:25
efficiency is a big one and which is the Ratio of a time a task
Wim:
00:09:31
is actively being worked onto the total time it spends in the system.
Wim:
00:09:35
So you can just divide that.
Wim:
00:09:36
I just take it was worked an hour over a week.
Wim:
00:09:38
So there's a an hour over 168 hours shows that it was only
Wim:
00:09:43
like a half percent efficient.
Wim:
00:09:45
So how do we get that up, which is reduced the time spent waiting,
Wim:
00:09:49
because waiting is waste, one of the seven ways is waiting, transportation,
Wim:
00:09:54
um, and several other ones.
Wim:
00:09:56
So flow efficiency, and then the delete time is important to watch, like how
Wim:
00:10:00
long does it take to get through.
Wim:
00:10:01
helpdesk ticket, how long, yeah, how many hours or days is it
Wim:
00:10:05
taking to get through a project?
Wim:
00:10:07
How many days or weeks is it taking to get that project done, done, any time?
Wim:
00:10:10
And then the third one is throughput.
Wim:
00:10:12
Now, all of these are about improving your throughput on the system.
Wim:
00:10:15
So it's like your, your ski lift, how do you get more passengers per hour?
Wim:
00:10:19
Well, it might be making sure your, the queues are running properly,
Wim:
00:10:23
you're not wasting any seats on there.
Wim:
00:10:26
Maybe we can speed up the ski lift a little bit, maybe
Wim:
00:10:29
better operator training.
Wim:
00:10:30
Uh, different methods to improve throughput
Steve:
00:10:31
Thank you, Wim.
Steve:
00:10:32
This has been very enlightening.
Wim:
00:10:34
Yeah, you're welcome.
Wim:
00:10:35
It's a big world.
Wim:
00:10:36
Um, and that's, uh, manufacturing has figured this out for many years.
Wim:
00:10:40
Reducing WIP is key there.
Wim:
00:10:42
Improving throughput, reducing these lead times.
Wim:
00:10:46
And I think IT and MSP world has a lot to learn from that.
Wim:
00:10:49
So books like The Phoenix Project, The Goal, and some other ones are just really
Wim:
00:10:54
helpful on getting up to speed on the Kanban thinking, flow thinking, and lean.
Steve:
00:11:00
Awesome.
Steve:
00:11:00
Well, thank you for coming on here today.
Wim:
00:11:03
You're welcome.
00:00:00
so definition of work in progress, um, which we call WIP for short, W I P.
Wim:
00:00:05
So WIP is the number of tasks currently being worked on at any stage from start
Wim:
00:00:10
to finish, initiation to completion.
Wim:
00:00:12
And an example of that is if you look at manufacturing, vehicles started
Wim:
00:00:16
in production but not complete.
Wim:
00:00:18
, tickets started but not complete in our MSP, projects started but not
Wim:
00:00:21
complete, and you can break it down.
Wim:
00:00:23
There can be WIP at individual stages as well.
Wim:
00:00:26
So in the manufacturing, you say, hey, car is waiting to be painted.
Wim:
00:00:29
That's work in progress.
Wim:
00:00:31
And if you look at tickets, maybe they're waiting on scheduling or waiting on a
Wim:
00:00:34
final review by a manager or by billing.
Wim:
00:00:36
That's also WIP at individual stages, so we wanna reduce the whip in the system
Wim:
00:00:40
and then reduce WIP at each stage as well.
Steve:
00:00:42
Now, how do we calculate work in progress?
Steve:
00:00:46
Is that another one that's as simple as counting?
Wim:
00:00:50
Just counting.
Wim:
00:00:51
Yeah.
Wim:
00:00:51
That's why with Kanban it's just very, very simple.
Wim:
00:00:54
'cause you've, you've got like your sticky notes on the whiteboard or your cards
Wim:
00:00:57
on a Trello board or Microsoft planner board, and you're just counting them.
Wim:
00:01:01
It's a very simple, we're not looking at the hours, not looking at story
Wim:
00:01:05
points, just the number of items in that column, in that system.
Steve:
00:01:10
Now, is this another one that we should be monitoring daily?
Wim:
00:01:13
This should be at least, I, I would say minimum daily on this one.
Wim:
00:01:16
And in some, some areas it might even be hourly or per minute.
Wim:
00:01:20
If you look at a, at a help desk and you've got a team of 10 people and
Wim:
00:01:23
you have, yeah, hundreds of tickets going through every day, whatever
Wim:
00:01:27
metric is, it could, it could spike, it could get really busy.
Wim:
00:01:31
So you can look at the end of the day and like, hey, it's under control now.
Wim:
00:01:33
Um, if you look at a throat today as well as staying within the WIP limits,
Wim:
00:01:38
um, so that's the concept of as well as, as well as, as well as knowing what
Wim:
00:01:43
is the ideal WIP limit and visualizing that, that are we over that limit?
Wim:
00:01:50
Um, so, in a help desk, let's say you're in progress ticket, tickets, it should
Wim:
00:01:55
be like maybe one or two per person.
Wim:
00:01:57
Because we want to get to single piece flow where you start a ticket,
Wim:
00:02:00
do the work, do your time entry in real time, and it moves forward.
Wim:
00:02:04
It doesn't come back to you, it's just you're done with it, on to
Wim:
00:02:07
the next one, grab the next one.
Wim:
00:02:08
A prioritized list of tickets, you're not having to think about what to
Wim:
00:02:11
grab, it's already been prioritized.
Wim:
00:02:13
Grab it, single piece flow on to the next one.
Wim:
00:02:15
And so that should be monitored.
Wim:
00:02:17
If it's, if somebody's getting a lot of phone calls and getting interrupted, we
Wim:
00:02:21
want to be on that and how do we get that whip back down, how do we redistribute
Wim:
00:02:25
it, can we protect that person so they can focus on the task at hand, how do we
Wim:
00:02:29
design it so that they're never having to jump between five or ten tickets that
Wim:
00:02:33
they've started and haven't finished.\
Steve:
00:02:35
Now, is this another one where upper management should be
Steve:
00:02:38
reviewing or should the entire service desk be reviewing?
Wim:
00:02:42
Teams should review that, managers should be looking at it,
Wim:
00:02:45
it should be, everyone should be, should be looking at this, the
Wim:
00:02:48
individual is looking at their whip.
Wim:
00:02:50
and asking for help, but in their daily team huddles, they'll be
Wim:
00:02:55
looking at that and realizing, hey, we're over the limit here, or we're
Wim:
00:02:59
at risk of going over the limit.
Wim:
00:03:00
How can we get one or two of these things done and move forward?
Wim:
00:03:04
What are we waiting on?
Wim:
00:03:05
What's blocked?
Wim:
00:03:06
Can we redistribute it?
Wim:
00:03:07
Um, so you get a lot of strategies to reduce, uh, work in progress,
Wim:
00:03:11
like employee cross training so that people have multiple skills
Wim:
00:03:14
so they can take on varying tasks.
Wim:
00:03:16
And I've seen that in, in my teams, other MSPs might have a team of five and
Wim:
00:03:20
everyone's kind of doing their, their own specialty and they can't really
Wim:
00:03:23
help each other or they're scared to touch other people's tickets over time.
Wim:
00:03:27
So this is part of Agile thinking is having the team to have.
Wim:
00:03:31
All the skills so they can grab pretty much any ticket.
Wim:
00:03:34
So somebody's on vacation, or sick, or just busy, somebody else can just
Wim:
00:03:38
pick up that ticket and keep going on, going, uh, working on it, getting it
Wim:
00:03:42
done without losing a whole lot of time.
Wim:
00:03:44
So that's one strategy.
Wim:
00:03:46
Using focus blocks can really help.
Wim:
00:03:48
You might have certain times of the week or the day where you're in D& D mode.
Wim:
00:03:53
So you're not going to get barraged with your Slack or Teams notifications,
Wim:
00:03:57
interruptions, those proverbial quick questions, which are never quick,
Wim:
00:04:00
and they take 20 minutes, and then it takes another 20 minutes back
Wim:
00:04:03
to get back to what you're doing.
Wim:
00:04:05
Getting people into focus mode of one at a time, do the work onto the next.
Wim:
00:04:09
Maybe not 40 hours a week, but a good part of the week.
Wim:
00:04:12
And definitely like a service coordinator, service delivery manager can play a key
Wim:
00:04:17
role in this, is watching it and kind of being like an air traffic controller.
Wim:
00:04:21
We don't want to be micro managing people, we don't want to be scheduling
Wim:
00:04:24
their calendar, but prioritizing the work and redistributing as required.
Wim:
00:04:28
Or maybe scheduling a huddle saying, hey, I see you're struggling on this.
Wim:
00:04:32
Or you mentioned you're stuck, let's grab two or three people and just,
Wim:
00:04:35
let's quickly huddle just on this ticket and get it, get it rolling.
Wim:
00:04:39
I'm actually seeing this in my Windows MSP Kirchhoff
Wim:
00:04:42
Technologies, is our WIP is so low.
Wim:
00:04:45
And that our response time is just amazing, getting stuff done,
Wim:
00:04:50
like, the backlogs are so low.
Wim:
00:04:52
And because we've taken this focus on WIP, with the Kanban visualization,
Wim:
00:04:56
with TopLeft, but just the culture, people working together, the daily
Wim:
00:05:00
huddles, the managers stepping in to get stuff unblocked, is, um, we're
Wim:
00:05:04
seeing the backlogs low, which means our lead time is less, people submit
Wim:
00:05:07
a ticket, it's not going to sit there for a week or two weeks, we're on it.
Wim:
00:05:11
Whether they're asking for a new user, a new computer, we
Wim:
00:05:13
can jump on it right away.
Wim:
00:05:15
So huge there and that's helped with client satisfaction, clients are happy
Wim:
00:05:19
giving us reviews, giving us more project work, um, our CSAT surveys
Wim:
00:05:25
are all like super high, we're using Kruhu on the ticket completion,
Wim:
00:05:29
they're all smiley faces, and we get reviews and testimonials there.
Wim:
00:05:33
Um, so it's been transformational is actually committing to do
Wim:
00:05:37
it with this flow mentality can ben thinking in the MSP.
Wim:
00:05:41
And our dispatcher is got capacity, she could probably manage double
Wim:
00:05:48
the number of technicians and tickets because she's not scheduling
Wim:
00:05:52
tickets, it's just prioritizing.
Wim:
00:05:54
So we're saving time.
Wim:
00:05:55
Clients are happy, teams are happier.
Wim:
00:05:57
Our WIP is so much better.
Wim:
00:05:59
Sorry, our mental health is so much better.
Wim:
00:06:01
People used to feel overwhelmed because they would have 15 tickets that they've
Wim:
00:06:04
started and they're feeling unproductive, not contributing, not doing a good job.
Wim:
00:06:09
And so now they're all feeling in control.
Wim:
00:06:11
They're feeling way more productive.
Wim:
00:06:13
They've got a manageable workload.
Wim:
00:06:15
They're clear on what's going on.
Wim:
00:06:16
So it's helped their profitability, the clients, revenue,
Wim:
00:06:20
mental health, everywhere.
Steve:
00:06:22
Now, what kind of misconceptions or mistakes, , will
Steve:
00:06:26
MSPs make when considering WIP...
Wim:
00:06:29
I think one is looking at this as an average.
Wim:
00:06:32
Like, hey, my team's okay because we allow like three tickets per person.
Wim:
00:06:36
And we've got a team of 10 and we're, we're under 30.
Wim:
00:06:40
But if you actually drill into it, most of the team has one
Wim:
00:06:42
ticket, but one guy's got 10 or 15.
Wim:
00:06:44
And that's, that's going to be your bottleneck.
Wim:
00:06:47
Um, so that's, we've got to look at per person, how are they doing with
Wim:
00:06:51
the WIP, but then as a team, that maybe the limit shouldn't have been
Wim:
00:06:53
30, maybe it should have been 20 or 15.
Wim:
00:06:56
And I emphasize a team based approach to it, of getting that WIP down,
Wim:
00:07:00
getting the throughput up, because the client doesn't care who's
Wim:
00:07:02
doing it, they just want it done.
Wim:
00:07:05
So that's, we can optimize.
Wim:
00:07:07
For person, let's look at the work.
Wim:
00:07:09
Focus on the work and on the system and less on the people.
Wim:
00:07:12
And to have the people come around the work to get it done, which maybe
Wim:
00:07:17
requires a bit of help or having a manager or another senior technician
Wim:
00:07:21
come in to escalate that and get it done.
Wim:
00:07:23
Having the team on the work, getting the, keeping the whip down.
Wim:
00:07:26
I think some people are measuring it, but they don't get some
Wim:
00:07:29
of the thinking behind it.
Wim:
00:07:31
Um, to talk about that here is, you can have all the tools, all the
Wim:
00:07:34
dashboards, but if the mentality, the team culture is not there, and they're
Wim:
00:07:37
not understanding this flow thinking to start to finish and reducing WIP.
Wim:
00:07:41
Um, that's going to be a huge issue.
Wim:
00:07:42
So, I advocate for every MSP to have at least one person who becomes the
Wim:
00:07:47
flow master, who gets the principles, who's driving the culture, who's
Wim:
00:07:50
training the team on the concepts, the methodology, showing why it's important,
Wim:
00:07:56
running these huddles, holding people accountable, creating the culture
Wim:
00:08:00
where everyone's contributing to it, so that if the huddle master is not
Wim:
00:08:03
there, that they're still having those conversations and still working together.
Wim:
00:08:06
And then some other traps is they're not agreed on, like, what
Wim:
00:08:09
are the steps in the process?
Wim:
00:08:10
Um, because the simple of a process could be you've got your
Wim:
00:08:14
backlog, you've got what you're doing right now, and what's done.
Wim:
00:08:17
But breaking it down with a few more steps could help, like, maybe
Wim:
00:08:20
you've got the triage step, or maybe a manager needs to scope out
Wim:
00:08:24
the ticket before it's handed off.
Wim:
00:08:25
Um, there's different steps in there, is what agree on the steps, and some
Wim:
00:08:29
people aren't, it's kind of a best effort, somebody's personal judgment.
Wim:
00:08:35
Do we want to agree on how we handle the work?
Wim:
00:08:37
What does done mean?
Wim:
00:08:38
A lot of people don't know what done means on a ticket.
Wim:
00:08:41
So they're completing it, they think they're done, and then it gets reopened.
Wim:
00:08:45
So if you can agree on what is the handoff criteria from one step to
Wim:
00:08:47
the other, that's going to help.
Wim:
00:08:49
with the work in progress because it's not coming back
Wim:
00:08:53
and they're not doing too much.
Wim:
00:08:54
You've got to agree on how you prioritize.
Wim:
00:08:56
Some people are using the priorities in ConnectWise or Autotask.
Wim:
00:08:59
Other people are using some other field or another board or assigning it to somebody.
Wim:
00:09:03
You've got to agree on how you're prioritizing it so they're
Wim:
00:09:06
clear on what to be doing next.
Wim:
00:09:08
So yeah, education ultimately, awareness, building that
Wim:
00:09:11
culture for high performance.
Wim:
00:09:12
Flow
Steve:
00:09:13
Bigger picture, what other metrics should MSPs looking at
Steve:
00:09:18
alongside WIP to get a more, I guess, holistic view of their MSP?
Wim:
00:09:25
efficiency is a big one and which is the Ratio of a time a task
Wim:
00:09:31
is actively being worked onto the total time it spends in the system.
Wim:
00:09:35
So you can just divide that.
Wim:
00:09:36
I just take it was worked an hour over a week.
Wim:
00:09:38
So there's a an hour over 168 hours shows that it was only
Wim:
00:09:43
like a half percent efficient.
Wim:
00:09:45
So how do we get that up, which is reduced the time spent waiting,
Wim:
00:09:49
because waiting is waste, one of the seven ways is waiting, transportation,
Wim:
00:09:54
um, and several other ones.
Wim:
00:09:56
So flow efficiency, and then the delete time is important to watch, like how
Wim:
00:10:00
long does it take to get through.
Wim:
00:10:01
helpdesk ticket, how long, yeah, how many hours or days is it
Wim:
00:10:05
taking to get through a project?
Wim:
00:10:07
How many days or weeks is it taking to get that project done, done, any time?
Wim:
00:10:10
And then the third one is throughput.
Wim:
00:10:12
Now, all of these are about improving your throughput on the system.
Wim:
00:10:15
So it's like your, your ski lift, how do you get more passengers per hour?
Wim:
00:10:19
Well, it might be making sure your, the queues are running properly,
Wim:
00:10:23
you're not wasting any seats on there.
Wim:
00:10:26
Maybe we can speed up the ski lift a little bit, maybe
Wim:
00:10:29
better operator training.
Wim:
00:10:30
Uh, different methods to improve throughput
Steve:
00:10:31
Thank you, Wim.
Steve:
00:10:32
This has been very enlightening.
Wim:
00:10:34
Yeah, you're welcome.
Wim:
00:10:35
It's a big world.
Wim:
00:10:36
Um, and that's, uh, manufacturing has figured this out for many years.
Wim:
00:10:40
Reducing WIP is key there.
Wim:
00:10:42
Improving throughput, reducing these lead times.
Wim:
00:10:46
And I think IT and MSP world has a lot to learn from that.
Wim:
00:10:49
So books like The Phoenix Project, The Goal, and some other ones are just really
Wim:
00:10:54
helpful on getting up to speed on the Kanban thinking, flow thinking, and lean.
Steve:
00:11:00
Awesome.
Steve:
00:11:00
Well, thank you for coming on here today.
Wim:
00:11:03
You're welcome.
