Only flow is important

I had this struggle in my head about dealing with interruptions/disruptions in the sprint for a very long time now. We and I have tried all kinds of process/people changes to prevent anything impacting what we do for the two weeks of work we committed, given it a goal, priorities to and called it a sprint … until it hit me this morning – the sprints and “shape” of our work are the problem, not the interruptions.

We have “interruptions” (in reality, new priority work) because we do not finish things in a day, things do not flow through the system, they get stuck as WIP for days and sometimes for the entire duration of the sprint 😦

Want to have fewer disruptions and flow? Work on smaller things, eliminate handoffs, get things to done. I know it’s probably been said a million times but as I said it was only today that it struck me that 2 or 1-week sprints are a huge contributor to hindering these.

PS

Not saying scrum is bad or kanban is better, just that … only flow is important 🙂