Async work is causing your company's WIP to skyrocket


I’m aware that many people like async way of working, which usually comes with remote work, but it’s actually causing your company’s WIP to skyrocket.

Async way of working inherently drives queue times up, which incentivizes pulling more stuff in, which drives waiting times even higher.

Individual people feel they are productive, while teams and companies are very much opposite of that.

It’s not about remote per se, but about async way of working which is very often incentivized with remote work. Async inherently means queue time. “The other side” is not yet available because it’s working on the other thing.

And, while I’m waiting for ‘other side’ to answer, I’m incentivized to start something else in the meantime (WIP going up). Same thing for the person that depends on me. When we aggregate this behavior across org, you can see so many items stuck in queues, killing flow efficiency

Based on this retweet.