Articles covering Kanban systems, flow metrics, forecasting, and predictability in knowledge work.
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Meetings
What’s wrong with our meetings? covers common problems and how to fix them. Improving the standup. And No Blockers, a commentary on what happens when people speak without actually thinking about what they’re saying.
For retrospectives specifically, see the Retrospectives section on the Psychology & Behaviour page.
Kanban Fundamentals
Classes of Service covers how different types of work should flow differently through your system. Blocked column: always a bad idea? The case for and against. Service Level Expectations and how to use them. The metaphor of lowering the water level to reveal the problems underneath.
Work in Progress
Setting initial WIP limits. What to do when you’re overwhelmed with WIP. Understanding the cost of interruptions and why context-switching is so expensive.
Forecasting
Why per-story estimates are waste and what to do instead. Probabilistic forecasting is a far more accurate approach based on historical data. Monte Carlo is the engine behind it: how it works under the covers and why people don’t use it. Reference class forecasting for larger bodies of work.
Slicing Work
Good forecasts depend on well-sliced work. Slicing stories and slicing epics.
Continuous Improvement
Continuous improvement in general. Recognising and dealing with stalled work.
| Article | Date |
|---|
| The three legs | April 22, 2026 |
| Debunking Monte Carlo myths | March 23, 2026 |
| Quick tips for demos | March 18, 2026 |
| Imprints in the ground | March 16, 2026 |
| Delivery pressure | March 9, 2026 |
| What to measure | February 5, 2026 |
| Start and end points for flow metrics | January 28, 2026 |
| Goodharts Law | January 20, 2026 |
| Does a mature scrum team need a facilitator for their daily scrum? | January 9, 2026 |
| Craving certainty - why we distrust probabilistic forecasts | January 6, 2026 |
| Stalled work | November 28, 2025 |
| Work in Progress (WIP) for a team | November 24, 2025 |
| Everyone should be able to update the board | October 19, 2025 |
| Priorities | October 15, 2025 |
| Speeding up the daily coordination meeting (AKA standup, daily scrum) | October 1, 2025 |
| Meeting punctuality | September 23, 2025 |
| Supporting the new hires | September 18, 2025 |
| The facilitators role | September 6, 2025 |
| Risk Management | July 27, 2025 |
| OKR's for Quality | July 22, 2025 |
| Prioritization | July 2, 2025 |
| Playing the long game | May 1, 2025 |
| Building the right thing | April 14, 2025 |
| No single right answer | February 15, 2025 |
| Driving to the airport | February 2, 2025 |
| WIP by Parent | January 29, 2025 |
| Jira's Start Standup Button | December 20, 2024 |
| Explaining technical work in business terms | December 16, 2024 |
| Only one ticket per work item | November 22, 2024 |
| Continuous improvement | November 2, 2024 |
| Focus on Value | October 7, 2024 |
| Looking for improvement | September 28, 2024 |
| High WIP invalidates prioritization | September 25, 2024 |
| Hybrid teams | September 4, 2024 |
| Audit | September 1, 2024 |
| Fractional people | August 29, 2024 |
| Optimizing for time overlap | August 28, 2024 |
| Learning to say no | August 22, 2024 |
| Intent of standups / scrum meetings | August 12, 2024 |
| Understanding the users | August 8, 2024 |
| No blockers | August 5, 2024 |
| Excessive sub-tasks | August 4, 2024 |
| Ambiguity in wording | August 2, 2024 |
| Definitions of Ready and Done | July 23, 2024 |
| Monkey Grassing | July 20, 2024 |
| When everything is a priority | July 11, 2024 |
| Self-sufficient teams | July 2, 2024 |
| When we do everything right and it still doesn't solve the right problem | June 18, 2024 |
| Horizontal scaling | June 13, 2024 |
| Book recommendations | June 11, 2024 |
| Monte Carlo under the covers | June 5, 2024 |
| What is Probabilistic Forecasting? | June 2, 2024 |
| Jirametrics 2.0 | April 22, 2024 |
| Reference class forecasting | April 10, 2024 |
| Data Accuracy | April 4, 2024 |
| Quickstart for JiraMetrics | March 16, 2024 |
| Stalled work | March 6, 2024 |
| Slicing epics | February 21, 2024 |
| Remote work vs in-person: What does the data say? | February 11, 2024 |
| Who should look at what metrics? | January 17, 2024 |
| Quality vs Testing: Solving the wrong problem | January 9, 2024 |
| Slicing stories | December 3, 2023 |
| Premature optimization | November 25, 2023 |
| What's wrong with our meetings? | November 19, 2023 |
| Per-story estimates | July 8, 2023 |
| What is a Service Level Expectation? | June 18, 2023 |
| Kanban: Simple, but not always obvious | June 10, 2023 |
| Keeping people busy | May 20, 2023 |
| Steps to improving predictability | April 25, 2023 |
| Optimizing collaboration | April 23, 2023 |
| Blocked column: always a bad idea? | March 31, 2023 |
| Technical Debt | January 28, 2023 |
| Multiple boards for a single team | January 1, 2023 |
| Who should define the workflow? | August 2, 2022 |
| Defining a workflow | September 20, 2021 |
| Staying within our WIP limits | September 17, 2021 |
| Moving backwards on a kanban board | September 14, 2021 |
| Getting Kanban metrics from the Jira API | August 28, 2021 |
| The cost of interruptions and how to reduce it | August 22, 2021 |
| Massively overburdened with WIP | July 25, 2021 |
| Flowing value | July 14, 2021 |
| Classes of service | June 16, 2021 |
| “We tried Kanban and it didn't work” | June 6, 2021 |
| Waste: Psychological Distress | May 27, 2021 |
| Understanding waste in the system | May 26, 2021 |
| The only way to win is to learn faster | May 25, 2021 |
| Improving the daily coordination meeting | May 17, 2021 |
| Setting initial WIP limits | April 18, 2021 |
| Lowering the Water Level - the metaphor explained. | April 4, 2021 |
| Introducing the Kanban Guide | April 2, 2021 |