“As we all know, a sustainable pace is important for the quality of the end product and the health of the team. Some slack is needed to get your senses together or reflect on the future of the product which allows the team to take better decisions during the course of delivery.”

From: “Kanban for skeptics“, by Nick Oostvogels.

This made me think about the importance of slack time – it was taken to a higher level via the Slacker Manifesto. It’s basically about how we are part of projects where people are kept busy by having a queue of items to do. Managers think that people must be 100% busy otherwise they’re not valuable. But queues are a true enemy of flow. To move toward flow it is necessary to reduce batch size, cycle time, delay, WIP, and other wastes (read the lean primer). And as such 100% people “resource” utilization is a myth.

Therefore:

The Slacker Manifesto:

“On occasions we do nothing. Or something different. Or something else.

Because this means that our teams are more effective.

It also means that we are freaking awesome.”

If you’d like to sign, go here.