Prodacity conference attendees asked me a bunch of great questions at the end of my talk.

I didn’t have time to answer all the questions live and decided to answer them in blog posts. One question that got voted up (in Slido.com) by other attendees was:

“How to convince management to allow first steps (ex: lower WIP, allocate capacity for quality)?”

Convincing others to do things differently means asking them to change the way they work – a difficult task indeed. I believe that kind of change begins with:

• A good reason to change 
• The desire to actually change
• The courage to try something new

So – why Change? What’s the problem?  And – what’s the opportunity? A graph like above is a powerful visual and can start the conversation on where you are and where you need to be. 

For example, if the number one metric that your executives pay attention to is time-to-value, then capture your current time-to-value (Flow Time) and plug it into the graph. 

What is your current capability when it comes to speed? If it’s remarkably different than what is needed, then that’s a good reason to change and may inspire management to try something new – as long as they are involved in the plans being formulated. Otherwise people may see the proposed change as a threat to their position, prominence, and self-worth.

Paint a picture with them of the three essential flow metrics (Flow Time, WIP and Throughput) to experiment on what the impact of lowering WIP can have on time-to-value. Provide a compelling opportunity for how to improve time-to-market and inspire others to tap into their desire to collaborate on creating the future. Where there is opportunity there is hope. Taking some action can breed confidence and courage.