Agile

My Agile Life: More Talking Less Meeting

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

More on my use of “Agile” and Scrum in my life!

As I’ve noted, doing personal Agile (in my case Scrum) makes you more aware of ways Agile goes wrong on the job or in your friend’s jobs. It’s contrast, because you can get your life running smoothly with Agile, so breakdowns elsewhere become more apparent.

An important part of Agile is that people communicate, often several times a day, perhaps even unscheduled. This asynchronous communication lets them meet and talk as needed, making the team open and adaptable. It turns development into a dialogue and is about meeting as needed, not meetings.  Communication is meaningful.

Sure there’s the classic Scrum standup (often done in non-scrum processes) but that’s the bare minimum. Good Agile is about good communications, and that doesn’t mean endlessly sitting in conference rooms. That means dialogue when you need it.

Even solo Agile requires communications that can be spontaneous – maybe even moreso when, say, you need to ask someone if they know what it is you found while cleaning the garage.

I’m guessing that if you’re doing Agile at work – and perhaps at home – you’ve got a lot of items blocked because you can’t get ahold of people. Hell, even if you’re not doing Agile I’m going to guess that you need a lot of signoffs to get things moving.  Those signoffs are probably not happening.

My guess is things aren’t moving. You can’t get people to respond. No one is talking but everyone is busy.

What do we do when we need people? We schedule a meeting. Then we have more meetings . . . and it’s harder to reach people.

Remember my theory that we can’t reduce meetings due to meetings? Yeah, this sounds familiar. We also have so many meetings we can’t talk to people.

We’re now so busy talking, because we didn’t talk, that we can’t talk.

So let me make a further radical proposal in Agile – if you have to schedule meetings to take care of five or ten minute touchbases, maybe you’ve got too damn many meetings as it is. OK, my guess is you always think you have too many meetings, but if you’re endlessly blocked because you can’t talk to someone, then it’s out of hand. I’ll also bet most people are blocked because of . . . meetings.

Let’s fix this.

Imagine if you worked on decreasing meetings, but increased the ability for communicating. Dream a dream like this:

  1. Start cutting out meetings, period. Encourage people to read reports, signoff, and look at information radiators. Verify don’t brief, use tacit signoff.
  2. Encourage spontaneous communication when possible. Sure, you’d have to set up some rules so people weren’t bombarded, but it’d help. Besides, when people practice open communication they also learn when not to interrupt others.
  3. Encourage people to block time on calendars where they cant’t be bothered. I do this at home and at work – when I have to focus, I get me some me time. A big calendar block of “DON’T BUG ME” does wonders.
  4. If you have problems, schedule Open Hours for important folks, where people know they’re available. Think of it as a middle ground between spontaneous communication and regular meetings.

There’s my radical thought of the day. If you start reducing meetings, maybe people will actually communicate.

(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: Pull

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

More on my use of “Agile” and Scrum in my life!

Let’s talk Pull, Agile, and personal productivity. Unfortunately this requires some backstory so I’ll try to keep it short.

  1. I use Scrum as my Agile method to keep life in order. That’s basically “have an ordered list of stuff to do, choose what to do in a timeframe from the top priority, do it, revise, repeat.”
  2. One of the foundational methods of Agile is Kanban. Kanban is simpler – have a workflow, and move work along the various states (like analyzing, doing, testing) while limiting work in progress. Often you only have one item in every state if that. Keeps you from multitasking and a big part is “pull” – something only moves along when nothing is ahead of it, ideally.
  3. Alot of Scrum uses Kanban elements including Work In Progress and Pull.

In this case, I’m big on Work In Progress and Pull. I’ve written about WIP before, so let’s talk Pull. This is a near-forgotten part of good productivity or personal productivity. There’s also a heavy psychological component that, when you acquire it, you’ll find your productivity soaring.

The basic idea of “Pull” is:

  1. You have certain states of work. Usually this is “backlog”, “definining”, “doing”, “testing”, and of course “done.”
  2. “Backlog” and “Done” have no limits, obviously.
  3. our backlog is in order of priority.
  4. hen one state is empty (no work in progress) then you can move an item into it. That’s pull. I like to think of it as a vacuum – when a state is “empty” it can “pull” something that’s ready to move on into it.

Catch the subtlety there? You can only move an item along your workflow when there’s a “void” that pulls it in. If it’s not ready, it doesn’t move (like a column not being ready for an editor who has free time). If there’s something ahead of it (like the editor is editing another column of yours, so your latest has to sit) it doesn’t move. You start thinking not in “pushing things ahead” but making space for things to move along.

I can’t tell you what a revelation this was to me, and it took me awhile to realize just how much I learned. It really started when I had a vacation weekend where no one was around and I wasn’t sure what to do. I had “space” so I not only relaxed, but I just “banged out” a lot of work and chores and the like. i would say “that’s done, I have space, what’s next” and I felt that pull and that workflow.

Later I saw it at work, where one of my teams uses Kanban. I could see flows both work and get jammed up and suddenly saw the importance of thinking in pull. Thinking in pull means keeping your workflow clear of blockages, of constantly focusing on making space and moving things along so other things can move.

This “Pull” idea is also a lot more relaxing than the endless emphasis of “pushing” things along. Pushing things along eventually creates a pileup and a wreck. Thinking in “Pull” means making things run smoothly – and getting more done in the end.

So try this, whether you use the same techniques as me, different ones, or are just trying to be more productive. Focus on “pull,” on keeping your workflow clear of blockages. Move along the thing closest to done first, limit what you have in progress, and see what happens when you open up space for yourself.

(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: Review Lets You Get It Right; Review Lets You Let Go Of Perfection

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

More on my use of “Agile” and Scrum in my life!

Perfection is the nemesis of success. The Perfect isn’t just the enemy of the good – sometimes the good is the enemy of ever accomplishing anything. Trying to get everything right can kill you, and sometimes even trying to get it really good is a barrier.

Sometimes you just have to complete something, review it, and improve it or do it again. Reviews are what let you get things done right – not trying to be perfect (which is not the same as being competent).

I learned this in my Agile Life efforts in, of all things – cleaning.

Cleaning is a regular effort – Business As Usual if you want to use bizspeak. It’s also something that may not always go perfect, from a difficult stain to not having a box to throw junk in. It’s also hard to get right as there’s always something else to do if you want to get obsessive.

So I had to do some cleaning and encountered a difficult issue in, of all things, the shower – nasty little stain. I didn’t have the proper cleaner, it seemed ridiculous to run out and buy it for five minutes work, and . . . I let it go. I’d get the stain cleaner at my next grocery run and get it next week.

By accepting yes, this stain wasn’t going to be a disaster, I avoided a half hour of running around for five minutes work I did the next week. Plus I learned to keep certain cleaning supplies on hand.

An agile way to do things – learn and improve and don’t sweat every detail. Delivering, review, and processing what you learn means you get better and waste less time.

Now cleaning is kind of a ridiculous example, but consider other places this applies:

  • If you’re writing something there’s only so right it’s going to be. That’s what editors, pre-readers, and just regular improvement will bring.
  • If you’re decorating the apartment do not think you’ll get it right the first time. Do your best and review it.
  • If you’re working on a web page and a photographer is late maybe you can make due with current photos – or what they sent you.

Finally, I’d note that if you’re doing something regularly – updating a website, cooking, etc. this is a REALLY good place to learn to let it go. Things that might not be perfect can get a bit more perfected next run.

I’d refer to the 10th Agile principle here: “Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential.”

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

– Steve