Agile Life

My Agile Life: By The Numbers

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s LinkedIn, and Steve’s Tumblr)

(My continuing “Agile Life” column, where I use Scrum for a more balanced and productive life continues).

Let’s talk estimating how much work something takes. This may sound boring, it will get abstract, but stick with me here – it’s pretty interesting.

I’m using the Agile method of Scrum in my own life, which involves sizing work to know how “big” it is. If you’re not familiar with Agile practices, just know this is an area where pros argue a lot, so if you think we’ve got it figured out, you’re wrong.

I size my personal work in terms of hours to complete because I’m self-aware enough to get those estimates reasonably right. It’s not perfect, and I wanted to get better. I think I found a solution while reading The Elements Of Scrum as a refresher, because the authors explained the challenges of sizing work better than I’ve ever seen.

Again hold on here, because we got some backstory.

In Scrum (and related methods) work is often sized in abstract points – the smallest piece is a one point, something twice the size is a two, and so on. Then people figure out how many “points” of work they can do in a given time – and this often works very well (I’ve seen new teams get it 80% right out of the gate).

Why does this work? Because people are great at relative sizing (this is twice the size of that thing) but not so much at doing specific time estimates. Leverage this ability and people get an idea of how big (or small) work is, and they can then do a decent job of figuring what can be done in a given time. Sort of zooming from general to specifics.

Sounds simple? It is, but many Scrum practitioners require points to be in the Fibbonacci sequence – 1,2,3,5,8, and so on. So something twice the size of “1” is a “2” – but if something is twice the size of a “2” you have to call it as more likely to be a “3” or a “5.” Sound weird? There’s a reason.

The author explained it simply that drove this point home:

  1. People are good at comparing the sizes of small things but have trouble with larger things. This applies to time take to sizes of physical objects and more.
  2. #1 gets worse the larger the things being compared are.
  3. You use the Fibbonachi sequence as the range between “allowed” sizes gets larger and larger, forcing you to make a judgement call and giving you a bit of buffer.

Where does this come into my time estimates? Well my time estimates weren’t bad, but they weren’t great. I also didn’t want to use points as some of my “life stuff” was far better measured in hours. So I started using Fibbonaci sequencing to estimate hours of work because this simple explanation made me realize I’d falsely thought I could estimate large stories as easy as small.

So right now the smallest piece of work is one hour – but I can’t say something is six hours, I have to ask if it’s more likely to be 5 or 8. Sure there’s probably over and under-estimation but it evens out.

I started doing this late June and in full this July – and it was an eye opener:

  • In larger pieces of work, had I used Fibbonachi numbers on big things, those would have been more accurate. Yes, some of my estimates were worse when I tried to be specific instead of using some constraint like “is it closer to 5 hours or 8”
  • Some of my fiddly little estimates (45 minutes, 90 minutes) were less accurate than their Fibbonachi counterparts.
  • My best estimates happened on things that were 2 to 3 hours long – fortunately the majority of my work. However there was enough “mis-estimation” in large and small items to probably throw off my monthly estimates by around 10-20 hours.
  • Items that were 8 hours or more were a warning sign to break things down – those were often woefully inaccurate and hard to work with.
  • Items that I did break down usually surprised me – there was often more work than I thought.  Breakdowns (again, using Fibonacci) were more accurate.

I’m going to be sticking with Fibonacci hours for now – maybe you want to try this in your own life, even if you’re not using Scrum or Agile techniques.

(By the way I do plenty of books for coaching people to improve in various areas, which may also help you out!)

– Steve

My Agile Life: That Glorious Flow

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s LinkedIn, and Steve’s Tumblr)

(My continuing “Agile Life” column, where I use Scrum for a more balanced and productive life continues).

I’m using Scrum to help order my own life. It’s going pretty well, and one of the things that helps is ease of communication, because most of my communication is with me. That’s the Agile ideal of regular, personal communications among team members made easier by me being pretty much the team.  Communication is easy when its in your own head.

This made me think about Scrum and Agile methods when multiple people are involved, from developers to customers. The clarity of my own Scrum-At-Home made me realize how many projects are held up by poor communication, even supposedly Agile ones.

How often is communication delayed on a project? An hour delay in communication can mean days of delay in a project.

How often is communication withheld to avoid conflict or trouble? A lack of information ultimately has to be made up for.

How often is communication handled by some people that aren’t doing, testing, or otherwise involved in the work? Someone abstract from the results will be abstract in their communication.

How often is communication the result of endless layers of people? It becomes a game of telephone operator, of checking and re-checking.

A lot of projects go wrong because of communication.  This is why communication matters, and why the Agile manifesto is almost entirely about communication:

  • Individuals and interactions over processes and tools – TALK directly to people.
  • Working software over comprehensive documentation – RESULTS over documenting them.
  • Customer collaboration over contract negotiation – WORK with people over messing around with fiddly pits.
  • Responding to change over following a plan – CHANGE in response to information.

Running a “Scrum of One” gives you an idea of what near-perfect communication is since you’re the only one involved. That feeling of flow, of productivity, is what you should be feeling in Agile projects at work. When you don’t feel that, something’s wrong.

My guess is you’re used to feeling something is wrong in your projects.

This is one of the many reasons I reccomend personal Agile to people. Done right, you know what real productivity feels like, real communication. Done right, you learn lessons you can apply.

(By the way I do plenty of books for coaching people to improve in various areas, which may also help you out!)

– Steve

My Agile Life: Agile Relaxation Your Relaxation

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s LinkedIn, and Steve’s Tumblr)

(My continuing “Agile Life” column, where I use Scrum for a more balanced and productive life continues).

I’ve put a lot of time here discussing agile techniques and mindsets for productivity.  But, let’s discuss relaxing and how it applies to an Agile Life.

Relaxing?  Having fun?  Yes, these are part of your life, so you’re going to have to figure how to handle them.  If you don’t, then you’ll either be less productive than you expect, or burn yourself out not relaxing or relaxing too hard.

First, relaxing and having fun can take time, obviously.  So how do you account for them in your taking an Agile approach to life?  I find two approaches work:

  1. One approach is to make sure you pick a workload that gives you time to relax.  If you’re good at making that call you should be fine – by the way, I’m not.
  2. A second approach is to capture social time as part of your plan – actual tasks/stories.  That way you get whole blocks of time to relax and it reminds you to relax.  This is probably good if you’re a bit of a workaholic – they act as roadblocks to that tendancy.
  3. A third approach, which I use, is to combine the above.  I capture major social events, and try to balance things out otherwise.  This mostly works for me.  I actually think if I did #2 I’d way overplan my own relaxing.

Now, once you find a way to make sure you have time to relax, I’ve found you have to approach it with the right mindset.  This is important – and believe it or not I’ve actually learned to relax better with Agile.

RESPECT YOUR WIP: I’ve discussed WIP, Work In Progress, the amount of items you want to work on at one time so you’re not distracted (I set my limit to 2).  Relaxing should be part of your WIP – if you do something big (like a con or a party) it should not violate your WIP limit.  If your WIP limit is one item at a time, you should have your plate of work cleared so you can focus and enjoy.

FOCUS ON YOUR FUN: Much as you want to avoid multitasking when working on something, you should avoid the same thing when relaxing, at least on big things (like a party, a really good video game, or so on). Give yourself a chance to have fun, don’t suddenly switch to work in the middle of it, don’t try to fuse “serious” relaxing with actual tasks.   Just as you should focus on a task, you should clear your mind for fun.

So there you go.  Some Agile insights on fun.  That’s why I do these things.

(By the way I do plenty of books for coaching people to improve in various areas, which may also help you out!)

– Steve