Making Work Visible: Exposing Time Theft to Optimize Work & flow

By: Dominica Degrandis

Narrated by: Erin Bennett

Length: 5 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's Summary

If someone stole your wallet, you'd notice it. So why don't people notice when they are robbed of something much more valuable than their wallet - time?

Today's workers are drowning: nonstop requests for time, days filled to the brim with meetings, and endless nights spent heroically fixing the latest problems. This churn and burn is creating a workforce constantly on the edge of burnout. 

In this timely book, IT time management expert Dominica DeGrandis reveals the real crime of the century - time theft, one of the most costly factors impacting enterprises in their day-to-day operations.

Through simple solutions that make work visible, DeGrandis helps people round up the five thieves of time and take back their lives with time-saving solutions. Chock-full of exercises, takeaways, real-world examples, and an easy-going writing style, readers will quickly learn effective practices to create high-performing workflows within an organization.

The technology world - and indeed the whole business world - is moving at a pace faster than ever before, and it shows no signs of slowing down. Instead of consigning ourselves to the pressure cooker of the modern world, it's time to elevate how we work. It's time to level up our game. It's time to make work visible.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2017 Dominica DeGrandis (P)2017 Dominica DeGrandis

Fantastic read!! This book is really eye opening!

I've already started implementing these practices with great success! Despite some belly-aching, my team is reaping the benefits. Wonderful read!!

4 people found this helpful

Six Stars

Loved this book, my only criticism is I wish it didn’t have as much of a tech or development focus, since I’m in a Different industry. But overall superb.

8 people found this helpful

It Found My Issue

I was so overworked, just bouncing from task to task, never enjoying anything at work, wondering why my stress level was through the roof. Manager above me of course using the old "you need to delegate more". I sort of believed it, but the tactics in this book showed me the true problem. The problem of dependencies and unplanned work are revealed with her tactics. Using her methods of making my own work visible, I can address the real problem, which was never not delegating enough. Really a work changer for me. I have listened to it several times and use her methods to make my work visible, unfortunately I am just a staff worker and can't help the company with making all work visible. Pity.

3 people found this helpful

Straight forward treatise on dealing with IT work

Easy to listen to, makes total sense and something I can use at work today. it definitely spoke to me.

It should be noted that anyone listening to this should download the PDF and follow along with the diagrams. Sooner things were harder to visualize in my head without it.

2 people found this helpful

Great book - read it!

It's a great book, and I found reading it much more rewarding than listening. Narration wasn't great (to my taste), and the book is highly structured and has great illustrations by Dominica. You will just get much more from reading it.

2 people found this helpful

Buy the ebook instead

There are some 60 visual references that can't be seen in an audio book. Get the ebook instead.

1 person found this helpful

good reader. ok book

it felt like it was missing something. worth the buy all things considered. the narrator was easy to understand and pleasant to listen to.

1 person found this helpful

Basic stuff, but does that we'll...

The reader is not my favorite, high pitch female voice, and again a little more depth here into the why, and it'd be a 5 out of 5.

1 person found this helpful

Bringing the benefits of Agile to Operations

I'm a strong believer of the Agile method in software development. But when faced with managing a devops operational group I noticed the struggle of forcing agile into the operational model of continuous small changes to the system and operations. This book helped me transform the agile Sprint methodology into a high-performing Kanban team. It has already helped a lot, and I plan to really listen to it again to incrementally improve what I've already started.Oone of the most useful books I've listened to this year.

1 person found this helpful

Real practices to solve common business problems

This book provides clarity on how to identify and solve some of the most common problems in getting teams to be more productive and deliver more business value.

1 person found this helpful

Not valuable to an experienced agile practitioner

This is the first book I’ve ever “read” on Audible that I’m giving up on partway through.

The advice and guides in here are extremely basis. “Unplanned work is bad”, “hidden dependencies cause delays”.

It’s very rudimentary and if you’ve ever worked using agile and /or Kansan in any meaningful way then there won’t be much for you in here.

If you’ve never worked with Kanban then this could be useful.

3 people found this helpful

Doesn't work as an audiobook

Didn't finish. Doesn't really work as an audiobook as it feels like an endless description of project management processes which isn't very engaging to listen to but may be OK as a refermence book.

1 person found this helpful

One for your bookshelf if you're keen on lean

Good coverage of key techniques and some excellent tips from the trenches. There are too few resources around which help you build and evolve your own Kanban board. This is one of the better ones