Agile Life

Agile Creativity – Principle #7: Usable Work

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

We’ve passed the halfway points! We’re now on the Seventh Principle behind the Agile Manifesto. It looks simple, and in fact is simple, which means I’m going to go on at length about it. Let’s take a look:

Working software is the primary measure of progress.

Yeah, it’s pretty clear isn’t it? I’m very fond of it because the idea is the measure of progress is something that actually works. No maybies, no charges, no plans, no mockups. Something that works is how you measure progress.

But let’s tweak it a bit for creatives, since creative work involves a wide range of stuff from art to presentations to films.

Usable products are the primary measure of progress.

There, not much of a change, but we broadened it out. You measure progress primarily by giving people things that are usable.

Now of course, I’m going to analyze the heck out of it.

You measure progress with something people can use – even if imperfect

Your efforts should focus on giving people something they can use and experience – that’s it.  It’s usable/working/review-able or whatever you want to call it.  That does not mean it is:

  • Complete.
  • Ready for public release.
  • Ready for all of your customers to use.
  • Even that good.

You may deliver work that’s incomplete and lousy, but at least each embarrassingly bad delivery there’s something people can use to give you feedback.  You will improve it over time.

As you may guess this means . . .

Delivering usable product means feedback

Giving people something they can use, no matter how incomplete or half-baked, at least means you’ll get feedback on it. It may not be nice feedback, it may mean a lot more work, it may mean a change of direction. But at least you know what to do next.

So the more often you deliver, the better you do getting people to their destination – because you learn how to better get there.  It’s a lot like navigation – in fact your customer or client may learn about what they really want once they have something they can really experience.

But it’s not just people who give feedback. You and your team give each other feedback. If it’s just you, then YOU give yourself feedback (even if it’s “that was dumb”). You also learn by making something usable as opposed to reaching abstract deadlines and milestones.

There’s nothing like having to make something workable to really learn what you have to do, and what you shouldn’t have done.

Now to do this . . .

This almost always means iterative development – so plan for it

So as you’ve probably guessed from reading so far, this Principle really hearkens to iterative development. You measure progress with usable product, so you’ll be delivering useable product over time – probably improvements of previous deliveries. That’s pretty common in Agile, obviously and we’ve already discussed it.

But this means that anything useable you deliver is something you should plan for and keep in mind. Don’t just work on something, work on it in a way that helps you give actual results as often as possible. This could mean:

  • Constant refinement, like putting a logo through more and more iterations.
  • Delivering in usable parts, like a costume where each piece is complete (and, say, at least display-worthy).
  • Delivering in review-able parts, like a piece of writing where each chapter is something that can be edited.

So you can keep getting work out, do that work in the best way that keeps delivering useable results. Because when you do that . . .

Usable Products Are THE Way to Measure Progress

Delivering usable products is the way to measure progress. There’s the obvious ones of “this customer is happy,” but you can also use this to get a bit more mechanical and procedural.

  • If you have a list of features for something, like perhaps a game, as you deliver them in prototype, you can check them off. Yes, some may be wrong or changed, but you can get a rough idea of progress.
  • If you are aiming for certain numbers, such as a performance score or loading speed or image size, then you can measure them – with workable product.
  • Of course, you get abstract feedback from others, maybe customers or even beta testers and early access users. They might provide other quantifiable forms of feedback, ranging from yes/no responses to answering polls and questions.

From simple lists of features to complex analysis, usable product is not just a way to measure results in general, but gives you a way to get specific results, maybe even complex ones that need some number crunching.  Thinking in deliverables and producing them gives you access to a wealth of data.

Though I wouldn’t overdo it. This is Agile after all, let’s not get complicated.

Rounding Up

Let’s review the Seventh Agile Principle for Creatives:

  • Frequently produce something usable for your audience, no matter how imperfect.
  • Iterative development is the best way to do the above, so organize your work accordingly.
  • Because you are delivering something usable, you’ll get feedback and learn, meaning you can produce a better product.
  • If you need to have deeper analysis, working products are a great way to do it.

It’s another simple principle, but it’s really great advice – progress is producing something.

Sounds like you could overload yourself with trying to constantly get stuff out, right?  Well, let’s move to the Eighth Principle . . .

– Steve

Agile Creativity – Principle #6: Facetime

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

Agile principle #6 is a simple and sweet one about communications.  It needs no embellishment:

The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.

This is obvious.  If you want to get the most done, effectively, talk to a person directly.  I could probably stop here and you and I have easily discussed 70% of the value of this Principle.

Obviously I’m not done – and we’re talking Agile and Agile Creativity, so there’s some subtleties to go into.  So I’d like to discuss this principle in a bit more detail, and focused on creative work.  This probably would be faster if we were face-to-face, so revel in the irony.

Good communication is vital to all work – creativity moreso.

It’s obvious that you get more done productively if you actually go and talk to people, and in-person conversations convey a lot of information effectively.   In-person you can judge gestures, expressions, voice pitch and more.  In-person you sync-up with people better.

When you communicate effectively, you say more, hear more, and can work effectively.  You can adapt better because you’re actually talking to someone directly and saying so much more.  I’ve seen team behavior change and become more productive when face-to-face activities are introduced.

In creative works are challenging to communicate because they involve everything from intuitive interpretation to understanding complex emotions.  This makes face-to-face or similar far more important because there’s just a lot to convey.  So if you have to collaborate creatively, get talking face to face

(As you may guess, I accept we can’t always get face-to-face, which means) . . .

Face-to-face isn’t always possible, so make due

Communicating with people on your team face-to-face sounds great.  It’s also probably impossible at many times due to location, travel, mutual loathing, and what have you.  So what do you do?  You find the closest-way to face-to-face in order to interact.  This could mean:

  • Video conferences (with sharing)
  • Chat programs (of course)
  • Phone conferences.
  • Meeting face-to-face when you can and packing in all the communication you can do.

You do what you can.  This may mean when it comes to creative works, you have to get pretty innovative.  You may do things like sending people videos and following up with online chat, and it may not be face-to-face, but it’ll be as close as you can get.

Is this somehow violating the ideal?  No, because . . .

Face To face is the most efficient and effective method – not the only one.

This Principle is a recommendation and a statement of truth – face to face is the best way to communicate within your team.  It’s not the only one, it’s just the best.  Agile isn’t big on hard rules and structures.

But sometimes the best is not available, so you do what you can.  Don’t fret, don’t beat yourself up over it.  Just do what you can.

A quick thought for solo creatives.

Does this matter to the solo creative?  Actually, hidden within this Principle are two important lessons:

  • You may be solo, but changes are you still are depending on other people for some things.  Delivering supplies.  Providing editorial services.  Etc.  Face-to-face still applies to these “team-like” connections.
  • Are you taking time to really communicate with yourself?  Analyze results, do research, consider where you’re going?  You might not be – learn to pay attention to yourself.

A moment for review

This simple principle is pretty easy to review:

  • Face-to-face is the best way to communicate with your team members.
  • If Face-to-Face isn’t possible, learn the best alternatives.
  • Even when solo, practice good communications techniques and take the time to self-reflect.

Simple one there.  Good, because the next Principle seems simple – but has a lot of depth.  In a way it’s a core to a lot of Agile thought . . .

– Steve

Work And Effort: Not Always By The Numbers

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

Latley I was feeling overloaded but couldn’t figure out how much. Turns out it was mostly in my own head.

Now I’ve been through a move, changes at work, and more. So the last two months my own workload estimates have been a tad off, all things considered. Now that I’m back at it, I decided it was time to get a handle on my work and my life. This included:

  • Making sure I tracked other time-consuming activities, like me workouts.
  • Getting back to my projects.
  • Recovering from the move.

So, I looked at my plans for March . . . and felt overloaded. Why was that, because in my head it made sense. Not much changed. Hell, I wasn’t moving at least.

Something didn’t feel right. You know that feeling of Really Not Right, and I couldn’t place it. Nothing came to mind, so I began to play with my schedule, looking at time taken, past work. Suddenly, something became very clear – an error you may have made in your own personal plans.

What I found was that I had overestimated the amount of work ahead of me, and that made me feel overloaded.

Normally, I’m for a little overestimation, just to be safe. But past a certain point, overestimation becomes not a buffer, but a source of confusion. Your gut, your mind, and your estimates can’t figure out how long things take or where time is going. That’s where I was.

  • I wanted to track more of my regular activities, making sure I accounted for them and didn’t get overloaded. I made sure to pad them a bit – which may matter little on one or two tasks. But when you’re talking things like cooking or working out that you do a lot, then padding adds up pretty fast.
  • I wanted to get back to my projects. Which of course I now was cautious about, so I overestimated a few of those. Which wouldn’t be as bad except I always juggle 2-4 projects.
  • Finally, I wanted to “catch up” on anything that got behind from my move, and of course, overloaded myself on top of some over-estimation.

Yes, in my effort to be Thinking Ahead and Develop A Good Backlog, I ended up overestimating so much out of caution I confused myself. So, uh don’t do that.

I also found I had to modify one of my estimating techniques. Check this out, it may help you.

Fibonacci Revised

As I mentioend in my Personal Agile, I estimate the time things take in hours using Fibonacci numbers – 1,2,3,5,8,13. This is common in abstract estimating as people are bad at determining small differences in large things – it’s easy to know if something is 2 or 3 hours, harder to know if it’s 4 or 5 hours, and real hard to tell if something is 25 or 26 hours. So Fibonacci estimating uses numbers with increasingly large gaps to force you to A) use certain numbers to avoid fiddling in the middle, with the side effect of B) By the time you’re tackling something so large maybe you should break it the hell down.

Now on the high level (beyond 3 hours) this helped me. But, I had lost control of detail on the lower end.

I didn’t differentiate between a 30 minute task an an hour. Or a 90 minute task and 2 hours. As I break stuff down pretty finely, I had overestimated work in many cases – and as noted as I also track many repetitive tasks, this balooned my estimated workload.

So now my “Modified Fibbonachi sequence” is .5, 1, 1.5, 2,3,5,8, 13. I give myself a bit of leeway on the low end.

I’ve wondered if in time I’ll learn enough I won’t need any kind of sequence as a crutch. I suppose I’ll find out – and share it with you.

Takeaways

So some takeaway lessons:

  • If your sense of what you can do and the time you’ll think it’ll take don’t “feel” right that’s a good warning.
  • Be careful on overestimation and adding too much buffer time to things you’re trying to get done. That causes confusion – and may squeeze out work you can do.
  • In estimating how long it takes to do things, tools like Fibonacci numbers may help on the high end, but give yourself leeway on smaller estimates.

– Steve