Recently, a team told me they ran out of work related to their present goal. They considered bringing in additional work to their Sprint that doesn't relate to their goal, adding more context for the team to carry out, and potentially slowing down goal-related work. They didn't know what else to do. Someone said, "We can't just let people run out of work."
Experiencing the pain of constraints is common for teams working within an agile framework (Scrum, Kanban, Scrumban, etc.). People often throw up their hands and wonder what to do with these rules when they make things more challenging.
Let's look at a core idea within most frameworks: the enabling constraint and how to work with them.
Most frameworks use an enabling constraint to drive desired behaviours. A constraint in this context is generally a set of rules that direct a team's actions.
The most common types of constraints are time-based or work-item-based.
The Sprint within Scrum is an example of a time-based enabling constraint. The six-week time box in Shape Up or our Initiative Focus window are all time-based enabling constraints.
Work-in-progress limits in Kanban (i.e. we can only have three tickets 'In Progress') is a work item-based enabling constraint.
So, what does the constraint enable? One group defined enabling constraints as "rules that limit actions to enable novelty."
I like this definition, especially in a creative context; artist experiment with rules and constraints to push their work. In our context, novelty is a means, not the end.
Enabling constraints are rules that limit actions to enable us to achieve our goals.
A musician friend wanted to focus on writing more songs and building a fan base, so he adopted a constraint to write and share a song every two weeks. The time box was the enabling constraint. It constrained his focus so he could achieve his goal (more songs, more fans) by regularly working on a piece from start to finish.
Within software development, people realised that the typical project deadline (which is an enabling constraint) was leading to undesirable outcomes: