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My Agile Life: Breaking It Down So It Works Together

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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 life).

One of the challenges of doing any work is that things we want to get done can conflict with each other, are hard to schedule, can only be done at certain times, etc. That makes anything, from delivering software to my own attempts to organize my life a bit more challenging.

What I found is that when you figure out the things you want to do – the stories and tasks – don’t just design them or break them down in a vacuum. Design them so they’re as easy to do as possible, hard to block or disrupt, and of a size where you can have a good chance to complete them in a reasonable time. This way you can maximize value, deliver quicker, and be disrupted less – and even when you are disrupted, you can switch priorities easier.

Here’s a few examples:

  • You’ve got to buy gifts for Christmas. You could have a simple Story “buy gifts” and “order for everyone on the list” but there’s a lot that could go wrong – lack of gifts, delays, a need for research, and that’s one big block-of-work. If you make a task for each person you can do them in order in one go – but if there’s any delays or unavailable items, you can take care of some of the orders a different way. This lets you timeshift or adapt (and is good policy).
  • You’ve got a massive art project to do. You prefer to do it in one 8 hour go, and you really can’t subdivide it without losing your mojo. You make sure your other tasks are broken down so you can easily fit them around the needed 8 hour block, and get the important stuff done early. (By the way, in my experience the Big Block does not always work, so be careful)
  • You plan to deliver a book chapter for a technical manual to an editor. It’s going to be a hefty chapter and require some research. You decide to make each section its own story.  This allows you to adapt (by doing them out of order), get them to the editor quicker (thus avoiding lots of WIP), and gives you a good sense of organization.

A rule I found helps is this: break down stories so that they don’t just deliver value, but require as few tasks as possible, and those tasks are as small as you can reasonably make them.

This will mean more stories, but stick with me here.

Stories deliver value. If you can break down stories into the smallest chunk of actual value, then you can deliver (and evaluate) that value faster. In turn because you are working on smaller pieces, you can shift them around, scheduled them, deal with interruptions by working on something else, etc. This also lets you focus better – and change focus if needed.

So if you’ve got lots of small stories, it’s probably a good sign. Sure there may be some big ones, but if a lot are small then you can move them around while you deal with the big ones.
– Steve

Steve’s Update 5/28

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

It’s my weekly Scrum style standup for the audience.  Which is you.

This week saw a lot of stuff with fanime, so let’s get to what’s up?

So what have I done the last week?

  • Way With Worlds Minibook #5:  As usual, writing.
  • Social: Fanime has gone great, seeing people, having fun.  And yes, I budgeted time for it – to make sure I relaxed.
  • Speaking: Spoke at Fanime, it went great!  Think the self-publishing panel needs to be broken up into several panels there’s so much to cover.
  • Cosplay: I was Doctor Oobleck, and it was a lot of fun!
  • Her Eternal Moonlight: The sale is on of course!  Which you probably saw in my announcements!
  • “A Bridge To The Quiet Planet:” Still a bit behind on this I’m afraid, mostly because I have to keep “extracting” myself from ideas I locked myself into during that failed first plotting.  Imagine it like building the foundation of a house and finding you still had some stones you laid while redesigning it.

What am I going to do this week:

  • Plan New Sprint for June: That gets done Wednesday or so.  Targets for June are releasing the first Minibook, speaking at Hydra-Con, finishing the “Bridge To The Quiet Planet” plot outline and writing the first chapter (again, hopefully).
  • Way With Worlds Minibook #5:  Well, uh . . . writing.  So as you guessed I’m doing a few bits each week or so.
  • “A Bridge To The Quiet Planet:” I’m going to at least get the character designs fully fleshed out and get the plot outline further along – at least to a few paragraphs if not a few pages.
  • Writing: I’m going to keep doing my Agile blog posts, but I think I’m going to start posting on my findings in writing – that experience of doing a major fiction project again is pretty informative.
  • Newsletter: A new newsletter comes out this Wednesday!  I also have to get all the new signups for my newsletter into the database!

Challenges and blockers:

  • Mostly challenges to do fiction writing again, I don’t quite have a sense of how long things take restored.  But hey live and learn.  This will improve in time – and I get to post my lessons.
  • There may be some challenges with training at work and some changes taking up time, so fair warning things might get delayed.

– Steve

My Agile Life: Agile Is A Dialogue

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

This is my continuing column on my “Agile Life” experiment where I use the Agile techniques in Scrum for a more productive, less-stressful life.   My latest insight to shareis how Agile and agile techniques like Scrum are about diaogue.

These dialogues may be with yourself, with one person, or with many people. But there’s always a dialogue to be had. Not surprising, it’s part of the Agile Manifesto.

Three of the four parts of the agile manifesto are about communication – among the team, with customers, and with the reality of change. You talk to each other, to your customer, and respond to reality.

I’ve had plenty of dialogues in my Agile Life practices;   I’m the Product Owner, the Scrum Master, and a Team Member – sometimes it helps to have a little sit-down with myself.  Here’s a few:

  • In my planning I’d look at my Backlog and my Projects and have to ask what delivers value.
  • I’d ask how to break down stories into deliverable value.
  • In breaking down my Stories into tasks I’d have to ask what the tasks were and how they’d complete a story.
  • In my daily reviews, I’d ask what’s next and think over what I had to do – and maybe coordinate with people on things like when I’d run an errand or who could help me with something.
  • My Cumulative Flow would help me realize how much work was in the air – and how much I was delivering, in case I was overworking myself.
  • As I took care of things, I’d get ideas for the next Sprint or ways to improve, and make sure I had revised my plans and improved my methods.

Scrum, the Agile method I’m most experienced in, actually sets up tons of “dialogue moments in the form of ceremonies:

  • A planning session.
  • Daily standups.
  • Retrospectives.

So when you’re trying to be more Agile, to use Scrum or whatever, remember the need for dialogue – even with yourself. Asking good questions means getting good answers and doing good works. Even if it’s just you sitting there asking what’s the best way to cook for a party.
– Steve