So, in my first installment on The Last Responsible Moment, I discussed what it is and the thought behind it. To summarize, doing things before they bring you benefit robs you of the opportunity to reap benefit that comes from doing something else instead.

In the last installment I also wrote about why we often fall into the trap of preventing ourselves from obtaining this benefit. It boils down to fear — Our fear that if we wait, something will come up as well as others’ fear that we won’t deliver on time if we don’t do something right away. Both cause inflated priority to force the task to be done earlier.

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Kanban, and Lean in general, both promote doing things at the last responsible moment. That can be a little against the grain for those who consider it good policy to get things done well in advance “just in case.” The last responsible moment is another way of saying just in time or deferred committment.

The thought behind this is simple. Doing things before they need to be done is a type of waste and a main tenet of Lean is to reduce waste. If you are doing things that don’t yet need to be done then you are, presumably, NOT doing things that DO need to be done. Call it misguided prioritization and/or opportunity cost. You are costing yourself, your team, your company, the opportunity to produce something that is more beneficial to them in that moment than delivering something that is not yet needed.

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In a Kanban system you introduce WIP limits at each step of the value flow. This means, that if you get stuck at any one step in the flow and things are not moving forward, then all those who operate in earlier stages of the system enter a holding pattern. If you’re explaining Kanban to managers or executives, this is usually the point that makes them take a sharp turn off of the Lean highway! They mentally write off the whole concept of Kanban because “they don’t want anyone sitting idle.” What skeptics call “sitting idle” is often referred to as slack in the system.

These executives and managers may not realize it, but they are turning their backs on the very thing that could make their company and its products more innovative and stable. If you are working nose-to-the-grindstone 100% of your day on new initiatives then you have no time to think, to reflect. Therefore, you have no time to consider innovations or improvements to your products and services. These developers struggle just to keep your head above water, to survive. They often, if we’re lucky, have lists of things they notice that need to be improved or defects that need to be fixed. Many of those things will never get the attention they need. That doesn’t sound like a recipe for success, does it?

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