Being able to take needless work out of the system is more important than being able to put more work into the system.

Remember, unplanned work kills your ability to do planned work, so you must always do whatever it takes to eradicate it.

“You even used the term I like most for it: unplanned work. Firefighting is vividly descriptive, but ‘unplanned work’ is even better. It might even be better to call it ‘anti-work,’ since it further highlights its destructive and avoidable nature.

“At the plant, I gave you one category, which was business projects, like Phoenix,” I say. “Later, I realized that I didn’t mention internal IT projects. A week after that, I realized that changes are another category of work. But it was only after the Phoenix fiasco that I saw the last one, because of how it prevented all other work from getting completed, and that’s the last category, isn’t it? Firefighting. Unplanned work.”

“Ha! ‘Small credit card breach.’ I like that. Like ‘small nuclear reactor meltdown.’

But problems, like dog poop left in the rain, rarely get better just by ignoring them.

In another area of the room, an engineer is talking heatedly to somebody on the phone, “Yes, we copied the file that you gave us… Yes, it’s version 1.0.13… What do you mean it’s the wrong version… What? When did you change that?… Copy it now and try again… Okay, look, but I’m telling you this isn’t going to work… I think it’s a networking problem… What do you mean we need to open up a firewall port? Why the hell didn’t you tell us this two hours ago? Goddamnit!”

“The First Way helps us understand how to create fast flow of work as it moves from Development into IT Operations, because that’s what’s between the business and the customer. The Second Way shows us how to shorten and amplify feedback loops, so we can fix quality at the source and avoid rework. And the Third Way shows us how to create a culture that simultaneously fosters experimentation, learning from failure, and understanding that repetition and practice are the prerequisites to mastery.”

You must figure out how to control the release of work into IT Operations and, more importantly, ensure that your most constrained resources are doing only the work that serves the goal of the entire system, not just one silo.

“a ‘change’ is any activity that is physical, logical, or virtual to applications, databases, operating systems, networks, or hardware that could impact services being delivered.”