Seven tips to improve flow – inspired by your holiday travels

The ultimate goal? Delivering value – whether that’s relaxation for you or results for your customers – as quickly and efficiently as possible.

But just as holiday travel can hit snags like traffic jams or flight delays, organisational systems can face bottlenecks and inefficiencies. Here are seven tips to improve flow in your organisation, inspired by your holiday travels.

Don't overload the system

Traffic jams during holiday getaways happen because everyone hits the road at once, overloading the system. The same applies to your organisation; every system has a capacity limit, whether it’s road networks, aeroplanes or delivery teams.

When your system operates at capacity, even minor disruptions – like a breakdown or sick day – can cause major delays. By visualising your workflow and tracking metrics like Flow Load, Velocity and Time, you can find the right balance between keeping your teams engaged and avoiding bottlenecks.

Use tools like Little’s Law to manage incoming work and keep your system running smoothly. Matching load to capacity ensures a steady flow, whether it’s on the motorway or in your organisational pipeline.

Think end-to-end

Getting to your destination is just one part of the holiday experience. Before you even hit the road, you’ve probably brainstormed destinations, planned activities and packed essentials. And once you arrive, you might still need to set up camp or check into your accommodation.

Similarly, delivering value in your organisation requires more than just executing tasks. It involves upstream activities like planning and prioritisation, as well as downstream efforts like deployment and customer feedback.

By analysing your end-to-end workflow, you can identify inefficiencies, such as handoffs or waiting times. For instance, saving two minutes by overtaking a car may pale compared to shaving 15 minutes off the tent setup every time with an air compressor. Focus on impactful optimisations that improve the entire journey.

Find and mitigate bottlenecks

Travellers north of Auckland are familiar with the alleviated bottleneck at Warkworth, where a four-lane motorway narrowed to two. Recent extensions, like the ‘Holiday Highway’, illustrate how addressing bottlenecks can improve flow.

Bottlenecks in your organisational system can arise from overloaded teams, limited capabilities or dependencies. While adding resources might seem like a solution, it can backfire if the bottleneck shifts downstream.

As noted in The Phoenix Project (Kim et al.), a process is only as fast as its slowest part. Tools like Flow Efficiency help identify where work stalls, allowing you to target the most impactful bottlenecks. Whether it’s automating testing or resolving dependency issues, these changes keep the system moving.

Manage your debt

On holiday, potholes or lost luggage can derail your plans, causing frustration and delays. These issues reflect neglected maintenance, just as technical debt hampers organisational flow.

By addressing technical debt regularly, you ensure a more stable system less prone to breakdowns. Improvements like automated testing, deployment pipelines and production-replicated environments are akin to expanding highways or introducing automated tolling – they enable faster, more reliable delivery.

Balance is key. Over-engineering delays value delivery, while neglecting system health creates future bottlenecks. Tracking your Flow Distribution helps you maintain equilibrium between new features, maintenance and unplanned work.

Minimise dependencies

Imagine arriving at your Airbnb early, only to find the previous guests still there. Do you start something else, risking delays on your primary plan or wait impatiently, wasting time?

Dependencies in work systems cause similar dilemmas. Waiting on another team to finish a task can delay delivery while starting new work risks spreading resources too thin.

Addressing dependencies – whether through cross-functional teams or incremental validation – ensures smoother progress. Reducing reliance on external inputs allows teams to deliver value faster and with greater independence.

Improve your predictability

‘Are we there yet?’ The classic backseat question mirrors the impatience of business stakeholders eager for delivery updates. Navigation systems help answer this by providing real-time data and estimated arrival times.

Your organisation can achieve the same clarity with flow metrics like Flow Velocity and Flow Time. Tracking these metrics allows you to forecast delivery timelines more accurately and set realistic expectations.

When stakeholders understand system capacity and see how prioritisation affects delivery, they can make better decisions. Sharing flow data fosters transparency and aligns priorities with customer value.

Measure against outcomes

You planned the perfect trip, but was it worth the time and money? Similarly, delivering quickly doesn’t guarantee success if the output doesn’t align with organisational goals.

Start by clarifying the desired outcome. Is your goal relaxation, exploration or family time? In business, this translates to aligning work with strategic objectives.

Flow metrics measure delivery efficiency, but coupling them with outcome metrics ensures you’re delivering the right value. Driving efficiently but ending up in the wrong destination – whether it’s Hamilton instead of the Coromandel – misses the mark. By aligning efforts with goals, you ensure every trip is worth the journey.

Bringing it all together

Before you kick into holiday mode, take a moment to reflect on how value flows through your organisation:

• Are you visualising your workflow?
• Do you track metrics to identify bottlenecks and trends?
• Are you taking action to improve flow and balance priorities?

Your holiday travels can provide valuable insights into your systems’ pain points and inspire improvements. And if you need guidance, the team at HYPR is here to help.

Happy holidays and may your systems – and your journeys – flow smoothly.