The Fish Man & The Sea of Metrics
When fishing for more people uncovers process insights
When More People Isn’t the Answer—It’s a Process Tune-Up
Ever been told you need more people (I will never refer to people as resources), when really all you need is a fresh perspective? That’s exactly what happened with Mr. Fish. He came to me with a familiar request: “How can we use workflow metrics to justify more hires?” Sure, hiring is one way to go—but it’s also the most expensive option. I had a different idea.
1️⃣ Step 1: Heat Map the Cycle Time
Let’s start with the heat map. Imagine a colorful graph that practically yells, “Look here—the bottleneck is in this stage!” Our heat map showed that work was spending about 1,000 collective days in the “Work” phase compared to 800 days in “Test.” In a team of just two (one developer and one tester), it was clear: the building process was eating up more time than testing.
2️⃣ Step 2: Track the Throughput Trend
Next up, we looked at throughput. We needed to know how many items the team was actually wrapping up each week. The answer? A mere 5 items. With 300 cards piling up—a card being a single sticky note request—the question became unavoidable: “Tristan, how long until we clear the backlog?”
3️⃣ Step 3: Run the Monte Carlo “When”
Now, it was time to get a bit nerdy with numbers. I ran a Monte Carlo simulation—a fancy way of using historical data to forecast the future. The simulation delivered a harsh reality: at 5 cards a week, the team would need two years to finish 300 items. Two years!
But here’s where it gets interesting. I tweaked the simulation to see what would happen if we bumped up the throughput by just 5 extra cards per week. Suddenly, the timeline shrank dramatically—to only 6 months. That’s a game-changer.
🛬 Landing the plane
Metrics on their own are just numbers. They only make sense when you understand the story behind them. Instead of defaulting to the pricey solution of hiring more people, I showed Fish that the real opportunity was to optimize the way work was done. Whether it’s cutting down on endless meetings, reassigning tasks, or simply having a more engaging Daily Standup—there are plenty of ways to shift the numbers in your favor.
Moral of the story: Don’t assume that more people is the only fix. Sometimes, all it takes is a smarter approach to process improvement to unlock value and delivery speed will organically rise.
Until next time, Keep Learning. Keep Growing.
Great viewpoint!