Knowledge management
Hyper-Productive Knowledge Work Performance
The TameFlow Approach and Its Application to Scrum and Kanban
by Steve Tendon & Wolfram Muller
This unique reference shows how to lead knowledge workers, manage knowledge work and build a hyper-productive knowledge work organization, by taming and managing the four flows of organizational performance (psychology, information, work, and finance) to produce spectacular operational and financial throughput results. Inspired by his experience and knowledge gained at Borland International, where a hyper-productive level of performance was achieved resulting in the most productive software project ever documented, author Steve Tendon devised “TameFlow”—an approach that can be superimposed on any preexisting process, method, and practice to enable performance improvement by several orders of magnitude, and a state of hyper-productivity. Adaptable to nearly every industry and applicable to any knowledge work domain or organization that generates business value through knowledge. TameFlow blends different ideas from a variety of schools of thought. It is founded in pattern theory and organizational performance patterns which are used to analyze and decompose processes, methodologies, and management practices into constituent parts to observe productivity patterns, and then recombined in new configurations to enable hyper-productive levels of performance. In this volume of The TameFlow Hyper-Productivity Series, the TameFlow approach is explained within the context of knowledge work performed in a software development organization. Mr. Tendon teams up with author, Wolfram Müller, a thought-leader and expert in Critical Chain and Advanced Agile Project Management, to demonstrate how constraints management (TOC) can improve Scrum and Kanban in powerful ways, bringing more predictability of behavior of the system as a whole, as well as to the individuals involved. Their combination becomes a breeding ground for the development of Unity of Purpose and Community of Trust. Both Scrum and Kanban (a method used for knowledge work with an emphasis on just-in-time delivery and change management) can be extended with features of the TOC, and help create a hyper-productive organization.
