The One Change
Late last year I made one change in how I work from which I am still reaping the rewards. Ironically enough, it was something we coach our teams to do. But it can be hard to have the discipline to follow best practices in how you approach your own work.
So, what did I do? I changed how I planned my work each day.
How do you keep track of all your action items? Do you use stickies? A digital Kanban board? Your calendar or your inbox? However you do it, I’m sure you have a list somewhere with all the stuff you have to get done each day (in between all those meetings of course).
Are you able to complete it each day?
When was the last time you checked everything off your list at the end of the workday?
Last year I would have answered “No” and “Never.” This year I can answer “Yes” and “Yesterday.”
“How?” you ask? Well like any good manager, I just added people. More work = more people, right? Of course not. But that is common refrain I hear from my clients.
Things like…
But, as an agile coach, I know that adding people is rarely the answer. Instead, I needed to take a critical look at my process.
Let’s start with a lean classic, limit your WIP (work-in-process). I thought I was limiting my WIP. I tried to keep my In-Progress column to only 9 cards. (I use Trello to manage my action items so the card metaphor works here.) My in-progress column is labeled “Today” because it represents all the work I need to get done today.
How did I arrive at 9 as the magic number? Rather than calculating my WIP as we do when coaching teams, I went with my gut. I believed I could get about 9 things done a day so it seemed like a reasonable place to start. But like a lot of Scrum teams I’ve worked with, I set it and forgot it. I never tested it to make sure it was the right number. It was not. Every morning I would start my day with a full commitment already. And as the day progressed, I would add cards to it. I needed to be responsive to new things that emerged as the day progressed.
So, I’d add them to the bottom of the column (or top), and I’d trudge along. However, after consistently following this process my “Today” column had 33 cards in it and was growing bigger every day. All things I had to get done today but never did! My anxiety was high—I couldn’t even look strategically at the list. I just needed to knock off some things, have a productive day, clear out some of the clutter, and then it would be back in range. That went on for months. Until one day…I gave up. I finally admitted to myself that I was not superhuman; I could not get 9 things done most days, much less 33. I was not really limiting my WIP.
That brings me to a second classic, a principle of the agile manifesto this time: Simplicity—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done—is essential.
One day last year, in a networking session with Women’s Business Council Southwest, the speaker asked, “Do you ever feel like you’ve been busy all day and yet haven’t accomplished anything?” “Yes! Every day,” I was thinking. She continued, “That’s because you’re spending time on things that aren’t important and avoiding the things that are hard but important. What is the thing that keeps you up at night? That’s what you need to work on…that’s what’s important.”
That hit home for me. I was trying so hard to “clear the clutter,” that I would intentionally avoid the things that were out of my comfort zone. But these were the very things that were keeping me up at night!
I had to change my process.
What I did
I sat down right before I left for the holiday in December and cleared my “Today” column—I flushed my WIP. I moved every…single…card left, back the backlog. I closed my laptop and walked away. And this is how I end every day now.
Every morning I start my day with nothing in my “Today” column. I pick the few things I have time to do that particular day around all my other meetings. This allows me to pick the most important things–the things that may have kept me up the night before or will keep me up tonight. Everything else has to wait until these things are done. That means that every day I refresh my prioritization, based on changing market conditions. (Where have I heard this before?) Daily is the right frequency for this context. In different contexts, weekly or monthly cadence may be better.
What I’m Learning
I can actually get 3-4 things done a day. I could never get 9 things done. Nine was assuming I had no meetings, that nothing new cropped up, that nothing else needed my attention, and I had no distractions. Nine was a fantasy. Nine was me ignoring my actual velocity like almost every Scrum team I’ve ever coached (at some point in their growth). Nine was not based on actual data; nine was based on optimism, and “optimistic-based decision-making” is not a thing.
Making new prioritization decisions everyday results in better decisions. It allows me to pivot without mercy or guilt to do the work that drives the most value. And it's not a waste because I’m actually finishing work every day. Rarely is anything “a percent complete.” I loathe “percent complete.” It's such a stalwart from waterfall days. I have to finish the work each day to be able to make new prioritization decisions the next.
If it's too big, I won’t be able to finish it. Of course I won’t! But without the discipline of a Product Owner or Scrum Master watching over the process, I tried to do it anyway. Never worked…shocker. So what do I do if it's too big? I split it of course! If it will take more than a few hours, I split it into multiple cards that each provide their own value.
These were principles I already knew; these are principles I teach and coach every day. But no one was holding me accountable. And without that accountability I got lazy. I succumbed to the kind of wishful thinking I see my clients succumb to every day. I guess I also learned empathy.
So let me ask you this…Are you able to complete your to-do list each day? Are your teams and programs able to meet their commitments every Sprint, every Program Increment?
If your answer is “no,” call us—we can help meet: springbach/30min.
Having the discipline to pay attention to the data and make decisions accordingly is hard. That’s why having an agile coach to help you define your process and learn and improve can be so valuable.
Conclusion
Last night I lay awake thinking about how I need to write this blog post and reach out to my referral network with a Tip of the Month. Nurturing my network and marketing my business is hard for me but important. So, this morning, with my empty in-progress column, I made those items my highest priority. I’m writing this post. It will be one of only 3-4 things I will get done today, but it's the most important thing for me to do today, and tonight I will sleep.
If you want some agilists to help you with outcome-focused meetings while still having some fun, let’s meet!