Time-to-Market Diagnostic
Ninety minutes, one worksheet, three actions with a name and a date.
This is the worksheet I use to find out where a team loses time, before deciding what to fix. You fill it in three steps: describe the process, separate the time someone is genuinely working from the time the work is waiting, then cross two numbers to reach a decision. If ninety minutes don't produce three actions with an owner, the worksheet failed.
It contains no universal benchmarks. The thresholds are sensible defaults to get you reasoning: change them when you have your own data that contradicts them.
What is inside
- Three steps on a single process at a time, with the time budget for each
- The three things to count: handoffs, tools involved, approvals
- The efficiency calculation, and the threshold below which a process is pure waiting
- The four causes waiting time comes from, in the order you should look for them
- A four-quadrant matrix that ends in a decision rather than a wish
- Three actions with an owner, a deadline, and the number that tells you it worked
How to use it
Pick one process
The one that makes you miss promises most often. Not the easiest to measure: that is a trap.
Fill it in away from your desk
Ninety minutes with the whiteboard open. Numbers from memory are worthless: if you cannot say where a number came from, it does not count.
Decide and write it down
Three actions, not seven. A list of seven never starts. Put a name and a date next to each one.
Who it is for
- Heads of Operations, Operations Managers and Delivery Managers
- Project Managers and Scrum Masters who answer for deadlines
- Founders and COOs of a scale-up that outgrew its processes
- E-commerce Managers answerable for fulfilment and returns
Who it is not for
- If you want a course to follow: there is no video here, just a sheet to fill in
- If you have fewer than ten people and a single process: there is no chaos to diagnose yet
- If you want someone to do it for you: that is consulting, and it costs
- If you want software to do it for you: it exists, and it is nothing like what you do