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Agile Creativity – Principle #9: Doing It Well

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

Now on to the 9th Agile Principle, one of my favorites (it’s hard to pick a favorite), because it makes a great point often forgotten. It also applies to so many situations. Let’s take a look

Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.

Ah just soak that one in. By paying attention to technical excellence and good design, you become even more adaptable, more productive – more Agile. Simple, and elegant, so as you may guess I’m going to analyze the hell out of it. It’s not that it hides any excret complexity – it’s obvious – it’s that there’s a lot of power in this that anyone can use – and Creatives have unique opportunities to take advantage of.

Let’s take this – backwards.

The Goal: Enhancing Agility

Note this Principle spells out that technical excellence and good design are things that one wants to pay attention to – always. That of course seems obvious, because who wouldn’t want to pay attention to doing things right and designing things right? But it states specifically that this enhances agility – that it lets you act, manage, and work agilely.

The benefits of these things aren’t just “hey well done” – they’re that you use Agile methods and apply agile principles better. There’s a benefit beyond the obvious of “doing stuff well.”

So it helps to spell it out. If you want to improve agility, do things right and design them well.

For Creatives, which often deal with unpredictability, ways to enhance agility are always welcome. Creatives are almost always entering unknown territory, have challenges communicating work, and more.  Anything to make work more adaptable, more predictable – more agile – should be welcome. More agility allows you to deliver more value.

So let’s look at just good design and technical excellence help you out – and help you be an agile creative.

Good Design

When you design something well, it’s more than just a “valuable” piece of work. It delivers other benefits that deliver agility. Let’s look at them and how they apply to creative work.

  • Good designs prevents errors since you can get it right the first time. This means you save time since you’ve got less revision – and aspiring to good design focuses you on listening to the client and understanding work so you deliver value. That helps in unpredictable developments, which you probably face a lot.
  • Good designs are repeatable in part or in whole – which saves time in the future. That lets you work faster since you’ve got other things to call on like design templates, reusable code, or helpful checklist. This can help you in creative works because you’ve got some work done already – at least the less predictable or more standard parts.
  • Good design makes your work shareable – because you can communicate it. This makes it easier to review with clients, as well as easier to teach to people. Creative work has its challenges in communication, so good design makes it easier – and good communication means more agility.
  • Good design is just good practice. Making something well-designed in turn helps you just learn to do things better – and that by definition will make work more agile.  Creative work often involves multiple skillsets, so good design helps deal with that.

Technical Excellence

Good design isn’t necessarily the same as technical excellence.  Good Design may be about laying things out and putting things together well, about organizing and making patterns apparent.  Technical excellence is about attention to detail, about doing things right, and about not overdoing things. Again, it has obvious benefits anyway, but  let’s see how it affects Agile Creativity.

  • Technical excellence just means things are done right and done well.  This ensures not having to redo things so you can move on – good for any form of organization, but in agile . .
  • Technical excellence also means that you’ve learned lessons you can repeat and teach.  Since many Agile methodologies focus on review and improvement, when you do it right once, you can do it again.  This is important in creative work since, with so many options in creative works, having repeatable work is helpful.
  • Technical excellence builds confidence in the people you work with and deliver work to.  When people see you do well, they trust you.  Creative works, which have many options and many variants, require trust.

You want to aspire to technical excellence period – but when you work with Agile methods, the benefits are even more pornounced.

When it involves creative work, it’s essential.

The Ninth Principle

The Ninth Agile Principle really is a great reminder that designing things well and doing them right has more benefits than the obvious – it lets you be better at being Agile.  When you’re a creative it has some specific benefits:

  • Good design helps reduce unpredictability, creates repeatable elements, allows work to be easier shared, and is just good practice.
  • Technical excellence reduces doing things over, teaches you repeatable lessons and inspires confidence.

– Steve

Steve’s Update 4/1/2018

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

Hey everyone, it’s Steve’s update.  So let’s find out what’s up!

So what have I done the last week?

  • A Bridge To The Quiet Planet: Is out to my pre-readers!  Yay!
  • Agile Creativity: Agile Principle 8 went out – and boy I had a lot to say.
  • Epic Resume Go Rewrite: I got the editor’s comments back!
  • Seventh Sanctum: I just posted the latest update – the Nexus!
  • Other: Mostly cleanup and a few other tasks.  I actually noted I let some stuff go until the end of the month, so instead I’m going to try and get Personal Administrative Stuff out of the way at the start of the month.

What am I going to do this week:

  • A Bridge To The Quiet Planet: Not much . . . except correcting a naming error in the book I sent to my pre-readers.
  • Epic Resume Go Rewrite: I’m taking a break this week to get a lot of general chores done.  I’ll probably try to get it edited out in one go middle of the month.
  • Agile Creativity: Agile Principle #9 is next, and it’s a good one on technical excellence!  This is a subtle one . . .
  • Seventh Sanctum: Tally up feedback on the Nexus and see what people think – so far it’s positive.  Thinking maybe the fastest way to fill it in is a Google form for people along with my own work.
  • Other: Prepare to speak at the Silicon Valley Comic Con!

– Steve

Civic Geek: The NRA’s problems and the future

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

The Parkland student-inspired MarchForLife protests have certainly had an impact. The NRA’s image is obviously tarnished and American opinions on guns have changed. Those bodes ill for the NRA – but also gives us ideas to address other issues where financial interests work against our citizens.

First, let’s look at where the NRA is:

The Parkland Students Got Organized Got Attention

The Parkland students got organized, got attention, and got a protest. This has had an impact, and it’s not going away – even if it fades (and it may) it’s inspired people and gotten them organized.

Two things stand out here:

  • * They were articulate and sympathetic by basically being themselves.
  • * They kept focused (though obviously there’s interest in other issues).

It’s really, really hard to argue with articulate people making the human point “I’d like not to be shot in my classroom.” There’s a message and people you can connect with.

The NRA Went On The Attack

And it looked awful. The NRA’s entirely geared up to be an attack machine (it’s really a PAC) and it responded as it does. When no one backed down, of course, what else can they do? They came of looking unsympathetic and unrelatable (wheres the students were otherwise)

Which brings us to a big issue . . .

The NRA-Adjacent Are Worse

Christ, I couldn’t believe the amounts of personal attacks on the Parkland students from assorted “journalists,” bloggers, and media lack-of-personalities. I mean I expected some of this, but it was far more vicious, petty, and stupid than I expected.

Then you get to the real fringe groups, the people looking for crisis actors and connections to pizza cults. They’ve already easily created or internalized various insane narratives. These both feed more “mainstream” journalists as well as self-reinforcing their own delusions.

The people towing the NRA line, the “NRA-Adjacent” look far worse – and that rubs off on the NRA. I have enough trouble telling Dana Loesch’s rants from someone on Twitter with six followers.

Which means that these people, when they look bad, make the NRA look bad EVEN IF THE NRA WERE TO GO QUIET. Since they can’t shut up, their activities are going to keep making the NRA look bad.

The NRA-Adjacent Are Vulnerable

Look at how fast Laura Ingrham apologized for mocking David Hogg when people went after her advertisers. Consumer revolt is not only helpful – it points out hypocrisy, viciousness, and provides publicity.

Remember how many people make a living providing punditry, and saying whatever pays.

There’s More To Dig Up

The NRA accepts foreign donations and has admitted it. There’s been suspicions for awhile about how they act as a kind of PAC/money laundering operation, and connections to Russia. They’ve got enough questions that additional public scrutiny isn’t going to e good for them.

Now they get to have it. When they and their adjacent advocates can’t shut up while they attack teenagers who don’t want to get shot.  We’re probably seeing a self-exciting system.

What We Can Learn

So what does this teach us about modern politics? It gives us some ideas of how to take on various corrupt groups and government officials – because they often fit the same pattern. They’re beliigerent, only know how to attack, have a “halo” of even more extreme believers, and there’s always something more to dig up.

Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. This means:

  • Be sincere and human.
  • Use the media.
  • Build focused movements.
  • Don’t give in to the attackers, but expect attacks.
  • Let those “adjacent” to corrupt organizations make the organizations look worse.
  • Be sure to use consumer boycotts and awareness against those adjacent to corruption.
  • When you have belligerent corrupt organizations and politicians, there’s usually more dark secrets to dig up.

These Parkland students didn’t just give us advocacy on gun rationality; they point to other ways to take on corruption in the system.

– Steve