Work in process. In manufacturing, there are three types of inventory: raw materials, work in process and finished goods. Even though I’ve never worked in manufacturing, I think a lot about work in process. I like to apply the concept to work more broadly. The excel file I started working on then set aside, that blog post I started writing but haven’t published, and that idea I briefly explored before getting distracted are all work in process. Unfortunately, half-finished work rarely provides value. That’s why I think of work in process as waste. How often have I abandoned work half-finished? Often enough that I believe avoiding work in process is a great way to work more efficiently. Ideally, I’d only start a piece of work if I believed I had time to finish it.
Time to value. Think about the last time you opened a webpage. The page doesn’t appear immediately and all at once. Behind the scenes, a lot happens to deliver your page. It’s a process. You might even call it work in process. At what point does the work start to yield value? Google coined a term for this in the world of webpages: time to first meaningful paint. It’s the time it takes for a page’s primary content to appear on the screen. It’s the best metric for user-perceived loading experience (aka value to the user). Once again, I think the concept applies to work more broadly. The sooner the work is finished, the sooner it can begin creating value. Rather than rushing through work, I think the best move is to think more about what “finished” means and design milestones that are bite-sized enough to deliver incremental value along the way. Note that even after a webpage’s first meaningful paint, loading continues.