Let Them Eat Code
summary
Claim: engineers spend 70% of time not coding, which at $150k/year equals ~$105k lost per developer (10 devs ≈ $1M, 100 devs ≈ $10M). Practical fixes shown: use Jira boards and simple plugins to make age visible, set WIP limits to match team capacity, separate dev vs code‑review columns, and track four flow metrics — WIP, throughput, cycle time, work item age — then use throughput for forecasting instead of heavy estimating; teams reduce context switching and finish work faster.
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chapters (20)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:27Developer focus time matters
- 3:12Cost of non-coding time
- 7:26Lean principles for invisible work
- 12:00Managing work in progress
- 16:34Prioritizing over distractions
- 21:32Preventing ticket aging
- 25:49Flow metrics for productivity
- 29:00Daily focus practices
- 30:46Sheep farming analogy
- 33:34Forecasting trade-offs
- 36:26Closing remarks
- 37:10Q&A on forecasting
- 38:33Handling stakeholder priorities
- 39:37Encouraging team help
- 40:41Optimizing meetings with flow
- 42:05Measuring work item age
- 43:28Reducing review wait times
- 44:31Fresh backlog kickstart
- 45:33Defining coding time metric
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