Intangibles are actions that do not provide immediate company benefits but must be completed eventually. Code documentation is an example of an intangible that is frequently cited. In this category are the majority of cards that lower technical debt but have little immediate business value.
Intangibles play an important part in the stability of a Kanban system. Therefore, while the card itself has no business value, its execution would greatly shorten the cycle time for other cards with business value, and that is value! Suddenly, the Intangible classification of the card does not adequately describe the card’s benefits. These “intangibles” have a quantitative “tangible” value. Think carefully about your intangibles before dismissing them. In the right hands, early delivery of these items could prove to be quite useful. As an added bonus, intangibles can aid in setting realistic goals for a company’s success. Permit me to elaborate.
According to the tenets of lean management, it is not optimal to have fully staffed systems at all times. That begs the issue, though: how much use should we anticipate? Actually, there isn’t any specific figure to give as an answer. However, the requirement for volatility is a major consideration. The more unpredictable the volume of work entering the Kanban system is likely to be, the more conservatively its use should be scheduled. Most managers resist this lean principle. Management seeks maximum usage. Intangibles help. The team can handle volatility by having a few intangibles in a buffer column before an “in progress” column. Intangibles can wait if value cards spike. If the team has time, they can finish some intangibles. If additional business-value cards are pending, suspend intangible cards. Intangibles can have lower flow efficiency, whereas business value cards can have better flow efficiency. It will increase the predictability of the business value card cycle while increasing team utilization.
In order to achieve a consistent rhythm all the way across the value chain, this method can be expanded. One team can focus on intangibles until the downstream team catches up if they are moving too quickly (and there is nothing they can do to interact with the slower team due to technical or skill-set issues, a different vendor’s team, etc.). It’s fine to work together and speed things up for the team even if you’re on the lower end of the spectrum. This is not always a simple task, though. Instead of continuing to complete more business value cards, which places more strain on downstream teams (and, in most cases, slows throughput even further), some of the upstream teams should shift their attention to the intangibles. Therefore, while the difference in overall throughput between the value stream stages will remain, the variation in throughput between the stages will be reduced, resulting in higher overall throughput, at least for all the business value cards.
For this reason, it is important to include intangibles when planning and to provide the system with the freedom to offer different benefits.
