Agile

The Work That Reinforces Also Weakens

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

 

My friend Serdar has a fascinating response to my column on the Agile Manifesto for creatives.  Focusing on my calling out overdocumentation, he sums things up amazingly well:

Back when I started working on Flight Of The Vajra, that mammoth space opera epic thing o’ mine, I wasn’t in the habit of assiduously documenting the contents of my stories for reference. If I couldn’t fit the whole thing in my head, my thinking went, it was my fault. Then I discovered Dostoevsky’s work notebooks and decided to stop being silly and start keeping track of everything. And thus was born my use of a wiki as a receptacle for all things related to a given project — characters, plotting, storyline, locations, red herrings, MacGuffins, veeblefetzers*, etc.

The trap with such things, as I quickly found out, is that you can spend so much time planning and documenting the project that it becomes tempting to use that as a substitute for writing it. In which case you’re not dealing in fiction anymore, but something more akin to tabletop RPG modules.

(Emphasis Mine)

I’ve played a lot of RPGs and games.  I love worldbooks and guides.  I enjoy fan wikis.  However, reading Serdar’s comments made me realize that it’s possible to take documentation concepts from one form of media and apply it to another inappropriately.

RPG books, character sheets, wikis, etc. can teach us great documentation skills, as well as different forms of documentation.  However, if one is not careful, one can take the methods and skills from one form of media and try to apply them to another where they don’t do any good and may harm the work.

Case in point, Serdar’s example of overdetailing something so much that you’re not writing, say a book, but a module about the book’s world – which may keep you from writing the damn book.

This is a danger that creatives face, and I think it’s a more modern creation – we have so many documentation methods and tools at our disposal, we may over-use them or use then inappropriately.  We end up wasting time with unneeded documentation and documentation forms that keep us from writing the story or creating the comic or coding the game.

A good creative has to be selective in what they document and how they do it.  By all means get diverse experience, try different methods, indulge your skills – but pick what works. Don’t go overboard with documentation you don’t need.

This is extremely hard for me to admit as a worldbuilding fanatic, but you can overdo documentation or do it wrong.

Let me leave you with a metaphor a co-worker used (which in term he derived from a Scrum training event) – optimal miscommunication.  You don’t have to say everything to say enough, and it’s better to leave things out to help you communicate what’s important.

Or as I put it, better to have 80% of what you need documented and it’s all useful, than have 120% of everything documented and then have to figure out which of the extra 20% you don’t need.

– Steve

Agile Creativity – Principle #2: Embracing Change

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

And we’re back to applying the Twelve Principles of Agile Software of the agile Manifesto – originally meant for software – to creative works. Let’s take a look at the second principle, which embraces what usually drives us up a wall. That, for those of you with a long list of wall-driving, is change.

The Second Principle is:

Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.

This is a principle I entirely agree with and am often terrible at implementing. This is because I’m often used to change being for bad reasons – and I’m sure you have similar experiences. It’s often hard to embrace change because it’s dumb.

However this embracing and leveraging of change is core to Agile, and that is what makes Agile so powerful. So let’s see what this principle can tell us about embracing change, even if we currently hate it.

You Embrace Change For the Customer’s Competitive Advantage

In Agile you embrace change for a reason, and that reason is to provide Value of some kind.  “Value” is really the reason for all Agile practices and principles, and using change is no different.

Note that the second principle doesn’t just say “embrace change because it’s change.” It doesn’t say you have to accept every change. You embrace change for specific goals – and as far as I’m concerned if the change doesn’t help the customer, there’s no reason to accept a bit of it.

You have to help sort out if a change helps your customer, brings no benefit, or harms them. Then you, the creative person doing the work, has to work with the customer to help them understand your choice – which might be to tell them *the change is a very bad idea.*

Because you are a creative, as you know your work intimately, you can help a customer decide how to react to a change. The result may not be “yeah, let’s do that.”  The results may be “this is the worst idea ever, let me tell you why.”

I think the change we learn to hate is the change where we cause harm or waste time by following them. We want to help people; there’s nothing more annoying than having that be prevented due to a bad change.  But a good change?  We can help with applying that.

EXERCISE: Think about the last project you did that faced some changes. How did you evaluate if they helped the customer? How did you communicate your findings? How could you have done better?

You Welcome Change Even Late In The Project

Even if we can embrace change, it’s annoying to have to do so when it’s late.  You got a lot of work done and now it’s wrong?  You have to restart some things?  Why?

But these late changes may be valuable, and thus worth doing. As annoying as they are, we should embrace them – but how do we do that?

I think there’s two ways to do it.

First, we have to accept that many of our ideas of “done” are often the enemy. We think something is “almost done” and is thus a solid thing, immutable, unchangeable. When a change comes it offends our sensibilities of “done.”

But, if we think of “done” as a point we navigate towards, tacking here and there, we can embrace change. That late change means it becomes “done better.” By accepting “done” isn’t as solid as we’d like, we can find ways for the actual “final” product to be more what the customer wants.

Second, we should make our creative work easily adaptable to change. This allows us to quickly alter them when new requirements come in. A few examples:

  • For a book, make the plot outline easily editable so you can swap things in and out.
  • For a graphic work, you save the image “historically” so you have many versions, and use multiple layers to edit easily and retain old elements.
  • For a training film you keep it broken up in many scenes for quick editing, only incorporating them at the end. You also never throw away a scene just in case.

So to review:

  • Let go of solid ideas of “done” so you can embrace change.
  • Do your work so it’s change-responsive, and can be adapted easily.

EXERCISE: Take one of your projects and ask yourself what are five ways it could have been more change-responsive?

Embrace Change

The whole point of the Second Agile Principle is that embracing the right change, even late, brings advantages. This requires a mind shift because often we’re trained or experience change as bad – we need to learn to outright embrace it.

I find you can get to this mindset with two things: focus on value, and embrace Agile methods and practices.

When you focus on value, you see change differently; it’s a chance to do better. It keeps your “eyes on the prize” and not on worrying over the latest changes or assuming the worst. It also helps you take a more “navigational” approach to developing works, adjusting to getting to the destination, or perhaps a better destination.

When you focus on Agile methods and practices, they give you tools to embrace change. Using them effectively and whole-heartedly helps you deal with change and get the most out of it – that’s what they’re there for.

There’s a lot of psychology in Agile. As you guessed.

The Second Principle Is Often The Hardest

So there’s the Second Agile Principle – embracing change. It’s perhaps the toughest one to embrace, but also one of the most potentially empowering. When we can alter how we approach change, we can find advantages for our customers, and be ready to shift so they get the best value.

It may just be a bit annoying as we change our mindset.

A quick review:

  • Learn to focus on finding the competitive advantage of changes – if any.
  • Re-think what “done” means so you can take advantage of valuable changes.
  • Make sure your work is “change-enabled” so you can alter course quickly, even when it comes late.
  • Learn to see change differently by focusing on value and using the tools available.

Change may be an opportunity; if we learn to see it and use it.

Now with change out of the way, let’s talk more value . . .

– Steve

Agile Principle #1: Early And Continuous Delivery Of Value

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

So for the next few weeks, once a week, I’m going to be looking at the Twelve Agile Principles of Software, the Principles behind the Manifesto, and what they mean for creative works. Though twelve of them sounds pretty hefty, it’s worth examining each They’re dense, pithy pieces of advice that really help you be Agile – adaptable and productive – and are worth studying.

The first Agile Principle states the goal of having all of these principles:

Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

Now as a creative you might not be delivering software. So let’s tweak this one a bit:

Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable creative works.

There, that’s your goal. Make your customer happy by giving them stuff they value regularly. It’s a simple sentence, but you can spend a long time taking it apart and learning Agile lessons. In fact, that’s just what I’m going to do – because there’s a lot of lessons in here.

Your Goal Is To Deliver Something Valuable.

Your focus as a creative (or anyone doing something really) is to deliver something that brings value to someone. All other means and methods are just tools to do this. Anything that doesn’t do this or gets in the way should be dropped, minimized, or addressed. Anything that helps meet this goal should be considered.

Remember, whatever you deliver when at all possible should be usable, but that doesn’t mean perfect. It may not be complete, like a first chapter. It may have revisions coming, like a logo. But make it usable.

These kinds of deliverables are important as:

  • They allow the customer to evaluate the work and give you feedback. Remember, even if your work is perfect, the customer may find they made some mistakes and need revisions.
  • This feedback lets you quickly deliver improved work.
  • It keeps up constant customer contact.

EXERCISE: Pick a creative kind of work you do – writing, art, etc. What are different ways you can deliver part of that work that still have value for a customer?

You Do It Continuously

Delivery should be something you do continuously and possibly even regularly on specific schedules. This continuous delivery means that you’re also getting feedback as continuously you deliver work. Or you should be at any rate.

Delivering work continuously can be challenging, especially if you’re used to thinking in complete projects. This means that you’ll need to figure out ways to break down work, deliver features incrementally, and find ways to get something to the customer. How you work now isn’t as important as finding a way to work so the customer gets value.

I find this to be very healthy for creatives (and anyone) as it keeps you from getting into static habits about work. Something that shakes you up and makes you think about how to deliver helps you find new ways to do work.

You Do This For a Customer

Your target audience (even if it’s you) has something they value. You make sure they get it in your work – they’re the reason you’re here.

This means:

  • You should communicate with them so you know what they want – what’s valuable.
  • You should talk to them regularly (with continuous delivery) to navigate towards what they need.

EXERCISE: Take a creative work you create. How can you break it down in ways that still give a customer value? For instance art can have various drafts, a book can come in chapter by chapter, etc.

This is your Highest Priority

No other tool, method, etc. is more important than actually getting the customer results they want and need. Now this may mean you have to help them find results. This might mean helping them understand that legal issues like trademark searches are something they want. But this is your highest priority, and all other methods and work centers around this.

EXERCISE: Write down five things you can do right now to focus on the priotiyt of delivering value in your given creative field?

The First Principle Is Important

Yeah, I know that’s one sentence and it becomes paragraphs. The Manifesto and Principles are pretty precisely written, so they pack a lot in. A lot like good Agile.

So let’s review:

  • You Deliver something valuable.
  • You deliver value continuously
  • This is done for a customer who you communicate with.
  • This delivery is the highest priority.

Got it? Good. We got 11 more principles to go, and there’s a lot to learn.

– Steve