productivity

Agile Creativity – Principle #3: Frequent Useable Delivery

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

All right now let’s get to what the Third Agile Principle and what it means for creatives, and continue our journey to apply the Agile Manifest to creative work.

I’m sorry, Third Principle of Agile Software. In fact, it’s kinda software-heavy Principle, which means for creatives we’ve got to rethink it a bit. Let’s take a look:

Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.

This is pretty clear: deliver actual stuff often. It’s just it assumes that you’re delivering software and that you deliver within a given timeframe. As a creative, you’re probably not delivering software, and we know all to well some creative works need delivery in compressed timeframes.

Let’s not constrain ourselves and think of the third principle this way:

Deliver useable work frequently, with a preference to the shorter timescale.

Pretty clear? Let’s break it down and see what it means from you. This one is *dense.*

Deliver Useable Work . . .

Whatever you give to a client, customer, etc. should be something usable. It may be rough, it may be incomplete, it may be rather bad. But you deliver something they can use, even if upon using it they think “this needs a lot of improvement.”

So why are you doing this for them – and perhaps to them?

First, usable work gets you feedback. A (somewhat) useable product, like a logo or document, means people can evaluate how you’re doing and give directions – or confirmation. It may mean they can even put your work into use, which means they get feedback to pass on from other people. For creative works, which have so many variables, early feedback is important as it helps you navigate to completion.

(Shades of Principle #2).

Second, focusing on useable work focuses you on making things people want and need. What is the highest priority to do? What makes something “usable” versus just “better?” Asking these questions means you are more likely to focus on what’s important; developing a new logo that looks right is better than slightly tweaking RGB codes to get the perfect blue half the population can’t tell from most other blues.

Third, this focuses you on delivery. You have to figure how tomake whatever you do actually deliverable and accessible – which can be very revealing. Having to make something that people can use means considering everything from file formats to image sizes to spellchecked documents. You have to ask just what to do first and in what order. This is a great way to reign in your creative ideas and focus on something you can actually give solid form.

These three words are a great way to focus on getting the job done – delivering the right thing so you get feedback. It’d be great to get that early, in fact . . .

EXERCISE: Think of one of your latest creative works. What made it “deliverable” – and how much work did that take over doing the actual work?

 . . . Frequently

If you’re going to actually give people a usable result, be it a comic strip or a piece of a costume, you don’t want to wait a long time for feedback. So when you deliver, whatever you deliver, however pathetic (but functional) it is, deliver it frequently.

Frequent delivery of work means the people you’re doing it for give you feedback more often. With more feedback, the next delivery becomes better (and perhaps faster). Frequent delivery means a dialogue, and enhances communications. In fact, frequent delivery can help lower barriers (psychological and institutional) as people get used to communicating and find new ways to do it.

This is very important in creative work as, with so many variables, communications helps direct your efforts.

With this frequent delivery, people also build trust. When a creative provides results to a client, even if incomplete, they’re taking the lid off of their process and giving people a view of how they work. When a client gives honest feedback that helps, the creative can trust them more. In both cases things are much more open and obvious.

This is very important in creative work as, with so many options and directions, and with work often being personal, mistrust or miscommunication can occur too easily.

Behind the scenes, thinking Frequency also means you restructure your work so you can deliver effectively. This can be challenging and even contradictory, say delivering the later chapter of a book earlier as it’s easier to do or more vital. But when you think frequent delivery, you think about how to deliver better.

“Frequently.” That one word in the Principle covers a whole lot.

EXERCISE: Think of someone you worked for where there was a lot of mistrust. How could more frequent deliver or communications have helped lower that mistrust?

 . . . With A Preference For A Shorter Timescale

Well if you’re delivering all this useable work frequently, getting all that feedback, thinking how to make things deliverable, you also want to do it as often as possible. The shorter the better.

This part of the principle accelerates all of the other benefits:

  • The faster you deliver the more feedback you get.
  • The faster you deliver the more you communicate in general.
  • The faster you deliver the more you optimize your work.
  • The faster you deliver the more transparent you are.
  • The faster you deliver the faster you get any mistakes out of the way (on all sides).

If there’s a challenge, it’s deciding just how frequent you really need to deliver. This is something to figure out between yourself, your client, any co-workers, and harsh reality.

This “more often” can get pretty common. After all you could optimize work to deliver daily or every other day. You might work directly with a client for a time or for an hour each day. If it works and delivers value then give it a try. In creative work, the more feedback the better.

By the way, I reccomend the timescale you use be regular if possible. Having an idea of when you meet, or when someone is editing a document, or when you have to send a file increases predictability.

EXERCISE: How fast do you usually deliver work to a client, and why do you work in that timeframe? Have you tried other timeframes – or any?

A Simple Principle With Many Repercussions

Delivering useable work frequently sounds simple – perhaps one of the simplest ofa the Principles, but it like all Principles it has hidden depths. Frequent delivery of useable work does everything from making you consider your work to enhancing communication. Besides, if you get anything wrong on the work or anything else, you get that fast feedback.

Work with people, clients and co-workers, to get that rapid and effective delivery into your creative works. You’ll be glad you did – or if you aren’t glad, you will be iteratively.

So in review:

  • Delivering useable work focuses your efforts on what to deliver and how to deliver.
  • By delivering work as early as possible, you get feedback on the work you’ve done, which improves the results and communications.
  • Delivering work frequently creates feedback, communication, trust, and transparency.
  • Frequent delivery of useable work requires you to develop the best way to deliver, improving how you operate.
  • The shorter the timeframe the better, as it increasea ll the advantages of delivering useable work.
  • Frequent delivery of work provides direction, guidance, communication, and builds trust – areas that creative work needs, but that are also very challenging.

 

 

– Steve

My Personal Agile: Work

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

Now let’s get on to the next step of my Personal Agile – doing actual work! You’ve got your Sprint Backlog, which is everything you plan to do this sprint (a month) so let’s go.

How Do I Start?

Every day I look at my Sprint Backlog and figure what I should do and want to do. Then I do it. In time you get into a rhythm where you unconsciously know what you want to get done – usually.

Yeah, that’s it. A daily review – maybe more than once a day – and doing stuff. Sounds simple? Of course it is – because you’ve thought this over and taken a manageable chunk of stuff to do. One of the great parts of Agile methods is that you get enough mindwork done up front and break stuff into manageable chunks that it’s easy to focus.

Well, What Do I Do First?

That’s pretty much up to you. In general, you should tackle highest priority work first and work your way down.

In practice, it’s often not as clear cut:

  • There are time constraints on when some things have to get done. You may not list cleaning that grungy guest room sink as your highest priority, but mom’s visiting.
  • Some work may need approval, materials, etc. Those art supplies you needed are late.
  • Some work you can’t stand doing for an extended time period. Maybe you start mowing the lawn this evening but finish tomorrow (but hey, maybe your mowing should be two tasks or even two separate stories).
  • When you start things you quickly realize your priorities are off. You really don’t need those new clothes.

Priority order is a good guide, but the only one.  Do what works.

Sticking With Things

To make sure you progress and stay focused, you want to stick with work.  Here’s a look at what I do:

  • If you take a task, make sure it’s one you can complete in one sitting or one that you’ll get done without anything else interrupting. For instance if you want to write up an essay but don’t finish it before bed, then the next day that’s your top priority.
  • Once you start tasks in a story, that story should (more or less) be your top priority. This lets you focus on delivering value. It also helps get the Story out of your mind. Remember, good breakdown means more stories with less tasks, and that makes this easier.
  • In all cases, try to focus on something being done and complete. Deliver value – or parts of value.

Sticking with something helps you stay focused and keeps you from the mental waste of switching gears over and over.  In a lot of cases it’s better to finish something and start the next thing unless you really have to.

How Do I Track Work?

You want to track the work you’re doing and to know what you’re up to and what you’ve done.  Here’s what I do:

When you start a task, move the “hours” estimate into the appropriate column, and keep moving it. This way you’re tracking work done:

  • Define – You’re fleshing it out and getting ready.
  • Developing – You’re doing it.
  • Review – You (or someone else) are confirming it’s done.
  • Done – Well, duh. Done. Congrats.

This is why I keep totals at on my spreadsheet so, at a glance, I know how many “hours” of work are done where. I’ll go into this more later.

One thing you’ll note is that I track the state of every Task (some methods only do stories). I find if you track and validate Tasks, the stories usually take care of themselves – a truly well made Task may not complete the story but is verifiable. It also lets me follow my progress in miniature as I’m pretty focused on this.

You may only need to check your progress story-level. You can use a pivot table for this, or other forms of visualization I’ll cover next.

How Do I Avoid Being Overloaded?

OK, here’s where we get a new concept: Work In Progress.  This is important.

Work In Progress, aka WIP, comes from Kanban, and has been adopted into many Agile practices, including, of course, some variants of Scrum. The core idea is to limit what you’re working on so you focus – and so you find blockages to completion.

It’s simple – you set a limit on how much work can be in each column (Define, Developing, etc.).  This is usually only one item.  I usually limit it to one task, but sometimes it’s limited to one story.  Nothing can move ahead until there’s “space.”

This idea of moving ahead only when there’s space is called “Pull.”  You don’t push items forward – you pull them when available.  I find this comfort is very comforting, it changes your focus on work.

But what if you’ve got a task in Developing, it’s done, but you have another task in Review waiting on approval? You don’t move that Developing task. It sits. You can either go Define a task and do some research, or try to get the task in Review, well, reviewed.

If all three are filled up? If your Defined thing is Defined, your Developed task is all developed, and you in-review task is in review? You should focus on the in-review task, but if everything is blocked, it may be time to take a break.

Now of course work may have to move forward, but you should acknowledge how you got blocked and fix it in the future. When things get jammed up that’s the sign of a flaw – and a sign you should change your approach so it doesn’t happen again.

Think this is tough? Some folks like to keep it down to one item being worked on period, no matter what the state. In fact, I’m an advocate, on the individual level, for doing this method. Sometimes I even succeed.

So what does all this stuff with Work In Progress Do?

  1. It forces you to avoid multitasking. Multitasking really distracts you, and the more you pile up half-done, the more you’re distracted.
  2. It rethinks work. The idea of “pull” of moving forward only when there’s space helps you see work in a more relaxed, appropriate manner.
  3. It reveals blockages and obstacles. Think of your workflow as a pipe system. If you restrict the amount that goes through it, when a jam up occurs you learn a lot. This is an enormous amount of Kanban – to the point where I’ve heard people say Kanban isn’t a management tool but just a way to find and remove blockages.
  4. It works better with good work breakdowns, so helps validate them.

Now because life gets complicated, I practice what I call WIP 1+1. That means the usual limit applies, BUT I allow myself to work on something else as long as I can get it finished in one go. This means if, say, something is sitting at my editors, I can go do some cooking or clean the bathroom. But I wouldn’t start something that may need another editor’s attention.

As noted, I do this on the task level.  You might find it works on the story level.

What If Something Takes Longer Than I Estimated?

That’s fine, that’s OK. It’s something to note for review at the end of the sprint.

If this requires you to cut work, fine. Figure what the least priority items are and don’t do them unless you suddenly have time. You’ll review this.

One thing I do is change my estimate to fit my new findings.

What If I Get Everything Done Earlier?

Well you could take a break. Otherwise, just bring the topmost items in from the Backlog into the Sprint Backlog, one at a time. Finish those items before taking something else off the backlog.

So This Is Just Taking A List Of Stuff And Trying To Do It Without Multitasking In A Given Timeframe?

Well, yes. Welcome to Agile, where we cut through the bullshit or break the bullshit into manageable pieces.

Next Up?

This may seem easy, but we’ll talk tools and visualization.

– Steve

 

My Personal Agile: Introduction

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

All right people, money where my mouth is time.  I’ve been talking to several friends and my girlfriend about my use of Agile methods (Scrum specifically) at home.  They’re curious, but they noted it’d be easier if I wrote this up.  Realizing I’m a writer I felt kind of dumb because, you know . . . I should have thought of it.

So guess what you’re going to see for the next few weeks?  That’s right – a detailed (but light) guide to my own Personal Agile system readable by normal humans.

Now let’s talk Agile, but first . . .

If You’ve Used Agile:

Don’t worry this isn’t fanatic or preachy stuff.  I come from an engineering and science background, bits and bytes and blood and guts.  I’m interested in results.

However I am big on learning and making good productivity part of everyday behavior.  That might get annoying.

You can probably skip the next section.

If You Haven’t Used Agile:

So what’s this Agile stuff?  Let’s go to a basic outline that is hopelessly minimizing everything but still useful.

  1. Formally or informally a lot of management and productivity has been top-town – orders, schedules, hierarchy, etc.  You get the idea – build a plan and follow it.  These days this is often called “Waterfall” but the basic idea’s been around for most of human history, and “Waterfall” as a concept is a comparatively recent invention.
  2. For a few decades at least (and informally throughout human history) people also have known this whole plan-it-then-try-it method doesn’t work.  Methods of alternate management and workflow have been developed.  Many are older than people realize, but were in specialized markets.  Look up the history of Kanban sometime.
  3. Software really seems to have blown the lid off of a need to find new ways to organize.  Software jacks all the problems of doing any task up to 11: it’s fast, it’s variable, it’s evolving.  A lot of methods to make software management and productivity work better evolved, and people started calling these collectively “Agile.”
  4. In 2001 a whole bunch of Agile people met at a resort to discuss this and produced the Agile Manifesto and the 12 principles, which are seriously worth reading.  This really consolidated and kicked off Agile practices – Agile had a Philosophy, and there was feedback between Philosophy and Methods.
  5. Since this time, people have been adapting various forms of Agile all over.

So that’s it.  People knew traditional management didn’t always work, software really revealed that and drove people to fix it, and from that emerged a more coherent philosophy that sent things into overdrive.

EXERCISE: Go to the Agile Manifesto and read it.  How do you apply (even if accidentally) the four core elements of it?

EXERCISE 2: Read the 12 Agile Principles.  Which make sense to you and which don’t.  Why?

Why Is Agile Different From Other Methods?

(Hey those of you who have used Agile?  You can keep reading now).

Here’s how I see Agile differing from other methods of getting organized that aren’t, well, Agile?

  1. Agile focuses near-obsessively on value and why you’re doing something.  As you may guess, Agile also helps you realize when something is stupid.
  2. Agile focuses on adaptability and responding to – even embracing – change.  This helps you get the most out of change, even when unwelcome.
  3. Agile is heavy on feedback and adjustment and review.  Improvement is baked in.
  4. Agile is about everyone involved practicing it.  This is why I think the Agile Manifesto is so important, it was a basis for people not just doing Agile but becoming Agile.

Cool, So What’s This Scrum Thing?

Scrum is one of the Agile Methodologies or Practices (I see people use the terms interchangeably).  It was my first encounter with Agile, and frankly I consider it and the older practice of Kanban (which I use parts of) to be the best stuff I’ve seen.  Yes, I’m biased.

At a high level, Scrum works like this:

  1. You keep a list of things you want to do in priority order.  That’s the Backlog.
  2. You set aside a block of time to do work, called a sprint.  This is often two weeks in software, but I use a month for myself since my life has a monthly cadence.
  3. Every sprint you look at your Backlog and take all the things you can do from the top down.  You do not skip an item unless it turns out something is more important.  Basically you take the most important things that you can do in that timeframe – that becomes your Sprint Backlog.
  4. You do the work and adjust and adapt.  Sometimes you find that there are issues, sometimes you find old work.  Sometimes you even find you have more time and grab more to do – off the top of the backlog.
  5. At the end of the sprint you figure out how you did, look over the backlog, and do it all again.

Scrum hits a sweet spot of “free-form” and “organized” for many.  You can predict work done more or less.  You know priorities.  If anything goes wrong you review every sprint and can navigate.  You also know what’s expected of you (or from yourself) in a timeframe.

You can probably see how this helps out.  When I implemented my own Personal Agile, which is mostly Scrum, I actually got everything done within the first 3/4 of the month.  I had a gain of 25% productivity – and I was already pretty productive using the Agile-sih “Getting Things Done” method (which is well worth reading up on).

EXERCISE: If you were more efficient – without overloading yourself – how much more do you think you’d get done?  Can you put a percent of gain you think you’d experience.

So What’s Coming Up?

Fine, you got the backstory.  Let’s get to the methods – next up we talk why things matter.

– Steve