How Work Works
The system of work is a model of how work works. Just like a physics model, it does not tell you what to do. It shows how things relate to each other. It allows to explore the impact of habits, decisions or policies in a particular context. E.g. the habit of “keeping everybody busy” can be modelled as a constraint on the risk of idle time. In the culture of keeping eveybody busy, the risk of idle time is to be kept low (if not zero). Oftentimes this leads to large WIP because work is started to avoid that a team member becomes idle.
Alternatively, it can be used to explore e.g. the impact of limiting WIP (constraining WIP), collaboration policies ( constraints on how we start and finish work), and deferred commitment.
