The Essentialist Kanban User

Over the past year, I've become a big fan of kanban. Maybe you can tell by the recent string of posts on this blog. But I would be remiss if I didn't also mention another idea that I came across at the same time. It's been as useful to me as kanban, in fact. 

That idea is Greg McKeown's Essentialism. His mantra is less but better. Find the critical few things with the biggest impact and concentrate your efforts there. Kind of reminds me of Erwin Rommel, come to think of it. But in a good way. 

At first I didn't see a direct connection between kanban and Essentialism . After stewing in my noggin for a few months, it dawned on me that both ideas are about the same thing, but from complementary directions. How's that, you ask? Read on.

All but the simplest kanban boards have swimlanes. That is, a horizontal division of the board that groups tasks into separate projects. Kanban's WIP limit addresses the vertical aspect of the board. The number of stickies in the 'doing' column can't exceed the WIP limit. Quite effective, but there's hidden weakness that can sabotage your work. 

What about the number of projects or swimlanes on the board? Kanban is silent on that. It's quite possible to spread out tasks among a gazillion projects and never exceed your WIP limit. Yes, you'd complete tasks, but you wouldn't complete projects. And completed projects are what count. A millimeter of progress in a thousand directions, as McKeown writes. 

Essentialism has the opposite set of strengths and weaknesses. The hard-core Essentialist focuses on one or two high impact projects. A laudable idea, but despite this there's no explicit warning not to take on too many tasks at once. There's no WIP limit. And again, projects aren't completed. 

While the idea of WIP limits comes from kanban, McKeown talks about keeping your Projects In Progress to a reasonable number. We'll call it PIP for short. 

We goes together like peas and carrots!

Kanban controls the vertical (WIP) aspect of the board, while Essentialism controls the horizontal (PIP) aspect. Each needs the other. You can think of Essentialism as fixing a hidden problem with kanban. Or you can think of kanban as a way of fixing a hidden problem in Essentialism. Either way, it's clear that both work better together than they do alone.

So go check out your board and count how many projects you're working on. Then go get a copy of Essentialism and make your work life even better!