I’ve been writing some code this week. Well, I do most weeks, but this week I teamed up with some folks here at work. It was great fun — and actually did something pretty useful.
What struck me, though, were the blockages in the process. Some of them was even built-in. That kind of slowness was frustrating, and I think it could have been avoided.
I was lucky to work alongside Lars Albertsson, learning from his vast experience at a few of the top software companies in the world. One phrase Lars kept repeating stuck with me as we set up and refined processes at Scling:
Flow is sacred. Do not disturb the flow.
This simple mantra carries profound implications. Not just for you.
Flow, in Lean thinking, describes the smooth, uninterrupted movement of value through a process. It’s the ideal state — and anything that slows flow — waste, stoppages, delays, bottlenecks — should be rooted out and removed.
When choosing how to work, we often control how flow in our process is affected. Take this example: at Scling, we did code reviews out-of-band, and approvals on pull requests weren’t mandatory to merge a feature. But passing our continuous integration (CI) pipeline was mandatory (and it was fast… ish).
WHAT?! What are you doing, man? In the words of Borat: “It’s like giving a gun to a monkey. VERY dangerous.”
Here’s the reasoning: sure, we need other eyes on how the code is written, but what it does — specifically whether it breaks anything — should be caught by our build pipeline. If bugs slip through, that’s a strong signal our pipeline isn’t good enough, and we need more tests and verifications.
A manual gatekeeper, like a PR approval, interrupts my flow (trust me — I’m waiting now on an approval for a one-line change in a build script). Worse — it also interrupts someone else’s workflow. Double-anti-flow move.
Or consider a failed item in a batch that throws an error and blocks the entire batch until someone fixes it. If flow is sacred, we let the other items through and flag that 1 in 4,363,225 items needs fixing. Flow is sacred for users, too.
There are other ways to tackle this — mob or pair programming means your code is always reviewed in real-time, for example. But the key mindset is this: do whatever you can to not break the flow.
Yes, yes — I hear you. “In our industry, standards say we must…” or “That won’t work because…” or “We’re not allowed to…”
But seriously — what is your flow worth? What’s the cost of me (and my two reviewers, from two different departments. Oh yes — I’ve worked there too…) waiting, blocked from moving forward? Very likely I’ll start something else, jump through hoops to keep busy (double repositories or git worktree, anyone?), making things more complicated and slowing flow even more.
It’s simpler to start with a straightforward mantra: Flow is sacred. Let everything else subordinate to that decision, and improve your process accordingly.
Most processes involving multiple people spend most of their time waiting (in my experience). This is a separate blog post I wrote — I’ll just steal the image here.
How to Protect Your Flow
We can often do way more about these waiting times than we think. Let’s do it!
Here are a few things I’ve found helpful to keep flow sacred in your work:
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Automate what you can. Build fast, reliable pipelines that catch bugs early so manual gates become unnecessary or lightweight.
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Minimize handoffs. The more people or steps involved, the more chances for waiting. Consider pair or mob programming, or at least asynchronous reviews that don’t block merging.
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Limit batch sizes. Smaller batches mean less risk of blocking the entire flow when one item fails.
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Communicate proactively. If something does block flow, make sure the team knows quickly so it gets fixed without unnecessary delays.
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Challenge your process often. Ask yourself and your team: Is this step helping flow, or hurting it? If it hurts, what can we do differently? Perfect theme for a quick retrospective; where are we waiting the most?
Flow is not just a buzzword or a fancy Lean concept — it’s the lifeblood of productive, happy teams and satisfied users. Protect it like the sacred thing it is.