Advice

Information Radiators, Refrigerators, And Hoses (My Agile Life)

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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!  This one isn’t quite as “life-directed” as my others, but the insights come from my personal work to be more Agile.

Lately I’ve become obsessed with Information Radiators.  As I was once inspired by Failbetter game’s public posting of their sprints and my own desire to better chart workflow, that kind of fits.

If you’re not familiar with Information Radiators, the idea is that its something (a chart, a graph) that’s easily visible and communicates information. Ideally in, say, an office or a home it’d be posted somewhere so that everyone sees it and quickly gets updated. In a situation like mine it may be a weekly update or a web page with statuses.

The important thing is that Information Radiators are clear, visible, and accessible. These are very Agile.

The opposite is something I’ve heard called the Information Refrigerator, which I’m now stealing for use in any damn conversation I can use. The Information Refrigerator is a source of information you have to rummage around to find anything. I’m pretty sure you’ve encountered these from work to softwere requiring you to dig around in charts.

The Information Refrigerator is distinctly un-Agile. It’s also just annoying.

To all of this I’d like to add the Information Hose.

The Information Hose is not an easy chart, not something requiring digging, but a graph or report that just plain deluges you with informaiton to th epoint of being harmful. You’re flooded with information, soaked, and wondering what happened – and when you try to figure it out, everything is doused in data and you can’t make sense of anything.

The Information Hose is overload. it’s not Agile (though people may think it is), it’s aggression.

I’m realizing looking back at Information Refrigerators and Information Hoses, I’ve encountered way too many of them (and, sadly, built a few). They’re disruptive, unhelpful, and in a few cases just ways to avoid responsibility – dump all the info into a Refrigerator, or spray it and leave.

When you’ve got a project you want to communicate it. You make it as easy as possible, as clear as possible – and enough as possible but no more.

Yeah, I know, not as my-Agile-Life as it could be. But I wanted to share. Plus you have a great set of terms to tell people at work when they’re messing up reports!

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

– Steve

A Writer’s Life: Cover Me II: Electric Boogaloo

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

Sorry for all the delays in actually posting on writing.  been a weird few weeks.  So I want to talk about Book Covers again – with an interesting exercise.

I was thinking about my future writing plans.

First, the covers for the new Way With Worlds books were OK, but I realized I didn’t have the skills/intuition to have made them jazzier.  In fact, I wasn’t sure they needed to be jazzier, and realized I lacked artistic insights.

Secondly, I’ve considered revising and updating some past books, and that would mean covers.  For some I didn’t want to go purchase new art, especially for more niche works.

Third, my “Big Books” usually have paid art.  But what of smaller books, or less “eventful” books?  Sure I could buy a cover, but I had some skills, so why couldn’t I make better covers?

Thus, I set myself a project – to build 30 covers in gimp (because I am cheap) before the end of the year if not earlier.  This way I’d at least have the skills to make a decent book cover, and more than enough skills for books that might not need something jazzier.

I did this by:

  1. Using the free photos at pixabay.com when I need them.
  2. Looking at various book covers and seeing what I could learn from them about what made them “work” – from classic sci-fi to cheese romance.
  3. Finding new gimp techniques and trying them out.
  4. Trying to duplicate different genres and feels.

You can see the results at my tumblr, and I think I’ve definitely gotten better.  In fact, the improvement rate has been pretty remarkable.

This is a great technique to improve anything – build a project with no “critical deliverable” but a goal and try it out.  It could be used for more than just covers – it could be for writing, cooking, and so on.  Take what you want to learn and make a fun project out of it.

However for you indie artists, this may be worth trying yourself.  All you need is the gimp and some photos.  If you build enough skills, then you’re just some time and maybe a royalty-free (or self-taken) photo away from a book cover.

 

– Steve

MVP and Anxiety (My Agile Life)

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

This is an odd post. In some ways it’s about psychology. In some ways it’s about my use of “Agile” and Scrum  in my life. Either way, I think you’ll find it valuable, even if you’re not reading those posts.

Imagine that you have a problem to solve, but you’re not sure how to solve it. Worse, this situation is complicated by having many options – a common problem in a wired age with so much at our fingertips. You’re paralyzed by choice and fear of the wrong choice – so what do you do and how do you get out of this?

There is a solution – and one that comes from Agile and Lean techniques. Yeah, I know, trust me on this and keep reading.

The solution is something called Minimum Viable Product or MVP. In software and general terms, it means something that delivers the minimum needed to go to market and satisfy customers and get feedback. To get an MVP you carefully look over what you have to do, pick the effective minimum for the audience, and get it done right.

In fact, an MVP may be all you need for a while. Consider how many people or companies use bare-bones web pages with nice graphics and don’t need any more. You can apply this philosophy to your life.

To use MVP in your life, from plumbing to writing, ask yourself what is the minimum you need to do well to get something complete and ready. Sit down, list your concerns or needs or whatever, pick only the ones that must be done, and do them. You’ve solved your problem, and if it’s not perfect, you can tweak it later if you need to.

(And yes, that’s over-simplified, but it’s enough to get you started.  MVPs for products get more complex.)

Here’s a few examples:

  • You want to have premade lunches for a week so you make a big pot of chili and garnish it differently each day. Next week you might cook two different meals at once, but this is done for the week so you can relax.
  • You want to get a chapter of a book to an editor, so you make sure it’s clearly readable without fiddling with it endlessly. The editor can take it the rest of the way so you’re not caught in a writer’s panic.
  • Traffic is crazy due to construction, so you find a path to work that, if not the fastest, is the least likely to be congested. For the rest of the month your commute is longer than usual, but it’s predictable.

These solutions are not perfect but they are good enough and they get you on your way. In some cases they’ll save you time from worrying more than doing.

The other benefit of MVP is that going for the MVP prevents what’s called paralysis through analysis in the business world – overthinking. MVP gets you on your way and moving forward. In turn, the fact you are at least done means you can reflect on what you did, what you need, and improve things later. Sometimes you don’t even know what you need until you’ve done something after all.

In many cases – especially in life – the MVP is all you need for a long time, maybe forever. Sure you repainted the bedroom the exact same color, you didn’t spend hours debating colors like “Thupe” and “Preamble Brown”. Yes, the report at work could look a bit better but no one cares about the cover color. MVP can often bring you back to reality as well as keep you from anxiety.

Next time you have to fix something or do something, think about the MVP. It’ll focus you on value, keep you from over-elaborating, and reduce anxiety.

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

– Steve