Lesson 3 of 23 · 7 min read
Waiting, Handoffs, Backlog, Searching: the wastes that slow office work
In Lean: four of the eight wastes: waiting, transportation, inventory, motion
Builds on: Your work is a process, and the customer decides what is value
In one minute
Lean names eight kinds of waste: activity that uses time or effort and adds nothing the customer needs. Four of them slow work down as it moves between people and tools: Waiting, Handoffs, Backlog, and Searching and switching. They are easy to feel and easy to mix up, so this lesson gives each one a simple test. Lesson 4 covers the other four.
The idea
Waste (in Lean: muda) is anything that consumes time, effort or attention without adding value for the customer. The Toyota Production System named seven kinds for the factory floor; later Lean practice added an eighth, unused skills, and carried all eight into offices. In an office you cannot see work piling up on the floor, which is exactly why it helps to have names for it.
Eight kinds of waste, in plain words
Every friction is named as one of these. The circle is a map, not a measurement: each kind gets an equal slice.- Errors and reworkFixing or redoing work that was wrong or incomplete.
- Work nobody usesReports or copies nobody reads, or work done before it is needed.
- WaitingFor an approval, a reply, a queue or a system.
- Skills not usedPeople doing work that does not need what they know, or with ideas that have nowhere to go.
- HandoffsMoving work or files between people, teams or tools.
- BacklogRequests, tickets or emails piling up unfinished.
- Searching and switchingHunting for information, files or people, and switching between tools.
- Extra stepsApprovals, checks, re-typing or polish beyond what the work needs.
Waiting (in Lean: waiting)
The work, or the person, sits still because it is blocked: an approval that has not come, a reply, a system that is down, information someone else holds. Nothing is being done to the item, yet time passes. Waiting is often the largest part of how long something takes from request to done, even when every single step is quick. Test: is one item or one person stuck behind something specific?
Handoffs (in Lean: transportation)
In a factory this is moving materials around. In an office the work item travels: an email forwarded to another team, a file exported from one tool and loaded into another, a request passed from desk to desk. Each pass costs time, usually creates a queue on the other side, and loses some context along the way. Test: does the work itself move between people, teams or tools?
Backlog (in Lean: inventory)
Work piles up unfinished: an unread shared inbox, a ticket queue that grows every week, drafts started and parked. A backlog hides problems, goes stale, and costs effort every time someone re-reads it to decide what to do next. Test: are you describing the pile as a whole, not one stuck item? One request stuck is Waiting; hundreds of requests stuck is Backlog.
Searching and switching (in Lean: motion)
In a factory, motion is a worker walking and reaching for parts. In an office the person moves, not the work: hunting for the latest version, searching three tools to find who owns something, switching between tabs to finish one task. Test: does one person travel between places to do their own task?
One boundary needs care. Typing the same data into a second system involves switching tools, but the waste is that the same information is handled twice. That is Extra steps, in lesson 4.
These four feed each other. Every handoff creates a queue on the receiving side, the queue grows into a backlog, and the items in it wait. That is why the most effective fix is often at the handoff, not at the pile.
Example
Illustrative example, not a real company.
A customer of an energy supplier emails to change their billing address. The service agent forwards the email to the billing team (Handoffs). It lands in billing's shared inbox among several hundred others, in no particular order (Backlog). The customer hears nothing for about a week and calls twice to ask (Waiting). When a billing clerk picks it up, they look in the customer system, the billing system and an old spreadsheet to find the right account (Searching and switching).
Four wastes in one simple request, and none of them caused by anyone being slow. Each comes from how the work is routed and stored.
Common mistakes
- Labelling by feeling. Everything slow feels like Waiting. Ask what is actually happening to the work: is it stuck, moving, piling up, or is a person hunting?
- Mixing up Handoffs and Searching and switching. If the item travels, it is Handoffs. If the person travels, it is Searching and switching.
- Treating a backlog as a work-rate problem. "Work harder" does not shrink a pile that grows because more arrives than the team can handle and nobody decides what to drop.
Words to know
- Waste (in Lean: muda): time or effort that adds nothing the customer needs.
- Waiting (in Lean: waiting): work or a person stuck behind something.
- Handoffs (in Lean: transportation): the work moving between people, teams or tools.
- Backlog (in Lean: inventory): work piling up unfinished.
- Searching and switching (in Lean: motion): a person moving between places to do their own task.
Check your understanding
Try it on your own work
Describe one recurring task that wastes your time, and see these ideas applied to it.
Worksheet for this lesson: 8 Wastes Checklist (free download, no sign-up).
Where this comes from
Naming distinct kinds of waste comes from the Toyota Production System, which identified seven; the eighth, unused skills, was added later by Lean practitioners outside Toyota.