productivity

My Agile Life: By The Numbers

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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 balanced and productive life continues).

Let’s talk estimating how much work something takes. This may sound boring, it will get abstract, but stick with me here – it’s pretty interesting.

I’m using the Agile method of Scrum in my own life, which involves sizing work to know how “big” it is. If you’re not familiar with Agile practices, just know this is an area where pros argue a lot, so if you think we’ve got it figured out, you’re wrong.

I size my personal work in terms of hours to complete because I’m self-aware enough to get those estimates reasonably right. It’s not perfect, and I wanted to get better. I think I found a solution while reading The Elements Of Scrum as a refresher, because the authors explained the challenges of sizing work better than I’ve ever seen.

Again hold on here, because we got some backstory.

In Scrum (and related methods) work is often sized in abstract points – the smallest piece is a one point, something twice the size is a two, and so on. Then people figure out how many “points” of work they can do in a given time – and this often works very well (I’ve seen new teams get it 80% right out of the gate).

Why does this work? Because people are great at relative sizing (this is twice the size of that thing) but not so much at doing specific time estimates. Leverage this ability and people get an idea of how big (or small) work is, and they can then do a decent job of figuring what can be done in a given time. Sort of zooming from general to specifics.

Sounds simple? It is, but many Scrum practitioners require points to be in the Fibbonacci sequence – 1,2,3,5,8, and so on. So something twice the size of “1” is a “2” – but if something is twice the size of a “2” you have to call it as more likely to be a “3” or a “5.” Sound weird? There’s a reason.

The author explained it simply that drove this point home:

  1. People are good at comparing the sizes of small things but have trouble with larger things. This applies to time take to sizes of physical objects and more.
  2. #1 gets worse the larger the things being compared are.
  3. You use the Fibbonachi sequence as the range between “allowed” sizes gets larger and larger, forcing you to make a judgement call and giving you a bit of buffer.

Where does this come into my time estimates? Well my time estimates weren’t bad, but they weren’t great. I also didn’t want to use points as some of my “life stuff” was far better measured in hours. So I started using Fibbonaci sequencing to estimate hours of work because this simple explanation made me realize I’d falsely thought I could estimate large stories as easy as small.

So right now the smallest piece of work is one hour – but I can’t say something is six hours, I have to ask if it’s more likely to be 5 or 8. Sure there’s probably over and under-estimation but it evens out.

I started doing this late June and in full this July – and it was an eye opener:

  • In larger pieces of work, had I used Fibbonachi numbers on big things, those would have been more accurate. Yes, some of my estimates were worse when I tried to be specific instead of using some constraint like “is it closer to 5 hours or 8”
  • Some of my fiddly little estimates (45 minutes, 90 minutes) were less accurate than their Fibbonachi counterparts.
  • My best estimates happened on things that were 2 to 3 hours long – fortunately the majority of my work. However there was enough “mis-estimation” in large and small items to probably throw off my monthly estimates by around 10-20 hours.
  • Items that were 8 hours or more were a warning sign to break things down – those were often woefully inaccurate and hard to work with.
  • Items that I did break down usually surprised me – there was often more work than I thought.  Breakdowns (again, using Fibonacci) were more accurate.

I’m going to be sticking with Fibonacci hours for now – maybe you want to try this in your own life, even if you’re not using Scrum or Agile techniques.

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

– Steve

My Agile Life: That Glorious Flow

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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 balanced and productive life continues).

I’m using Scrum to help order my own life. It’s going pretty well, and one of the things that helps is ease of communication, because most of my communication is with me. That’s the Agile ideal of regular, personal communications among team members made easier by me being pretty much the team.  Communication is easy when its in your own head.

This made me think about Scrum and Agile methods when multiple people are involved, from developers to customers. The clarity of my own Scrum-At-Home made me realize how many projects are held up by poor communication, even supposedly Agile ones.

How often is communication delayed on a project? An hour delay in communication can mean days of delay in a project.

How often is communication withheld to avoid conflict or trouble? A lack of information ultimately has to be made up for.

How often is communication handled by some people that aren’t doing, testing, or otherwise involved in the work? Someone abstract from the results will be abstract in their communication.

How often is communication the result of endless layers of people? It becomes a game of telephone operator, of checking and re-checking.

A lot of projects go wrong because of communication.  This is why communication matters, and why the Agile manifesto is almost entirely about communication:

  • Individuals and interactions over processes and tools – TALK directly to people.
  • Working software over comprehensive documentation – RESULTS over documenting them.
  • Customer collaboration over contract negotiation – WORK with people over messing around with fiddly pits.
  • Responding to change over following a plan – CHANGE in response to information.

Running a “Scrum of One” gives you an idea of what near-perfect communication is since you’re the only one involved. That feeling of flow, of productivity, is what you should be feeling in Agile projects at work. When you don’t feel that, something’s wrong.

My guess is you’re used to feeling something is wrong in your projects.

This is one of the many reasons I reccomend personal Agile to people. Done right, you know what real productivity feels like, real communication. Done right, you learn lessons you can apply.

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

– Steve

My Agile Life: A Quick Review

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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 balanced and productive life continues).

I’ve been using Agile to have a more productive life, and it’s been pretty great. So to help you out (and help me organize my thoughts) here’s what I currently do. I think I’ll do these roundups every few months, so you can try the latest iteration of my system, and I get better at sharing.

First out, what I’m doing is the Agile method of Scrum in my own life. If you’re not familiar with Scrum it’s basically:

  1. Have a ranked backlog of stuff to do.
  2. Choose how much you can do in a given time frame from the top – this timeframe is called a Sprint.
  3. Do it.
  4. Review how you did, revise the backlog, and start a new sprint.

That’s Scrum. Here’s how I do it – first, the lists I keep.

  1. I have an Incubator. This is my list of Neat Stuff to do, summed up. I update it monthly or so and review it monthly as well.
  2. I have a Backlog/Roadmap. This is a list of things I want to do, in order, usually on the Project level, but sometimes broken down into stories (pieces of value). It’s ranked both by importance and “guessed” chronology – a few things are tagged with critical dates. I could probably split these up but I don’t think I need it.
  3. I have a Sprint Backlog.  This is what I decide to do every sprint – which for me is a month. This isn’t ranked, but is more sorted in a project order. This is broken down by Projects, with stories, with specific tasks. I estimate effort by hours. I review this every day.
  4. I have a cumulative flow chart, which is based on Tasks (not normal process, but most of my work breaks down pretty finely). This gives me a visual idea of how I’m doing, and is good practice on using these charts.

What I do is review things every day to see what’s up and decide what to do – but after regular review, I’m usually aware of my next few days of work automatically. I’ve kept a weekly schedule but fell off of it – I’m not sure I need to, as my daily reviews keep me aware of what’s going on.

A few things on how I operate:

  • Break down work into workable components – A real challenge at times as you can treat work as big lumps, or turn it into so many tiny tasks you can’t focus.  Find some way to break things down that you can get things done without overloading yourself, but not so much you can’t keep track of the little parts.
  • Limit Work In Progress, WIP, To 2 items.  WIP keeps you from juggling too many balls. I normally prefer a WIP of one, but when you’re doing Scrum for real life you’re going to have interruptions. Usually at most I have one “in progress” item with another “free item” for all sorts of tasks like cleaning, etc. However if I have one “ball” in the air I make sure any new one is finished right away.
  • Polish that backlog. Keep revising this as you go so when you get ready to plan, you pretty much know what you’re doing next.
  • Keep a regular task backlog. This is one way I save time planning, preparing a list of regular common tasks I have to do monthly so I already know most of my schedule. I copy that into:
  • My projected “next month” backlog. I keep a draft of what I’ll “probably” do next. This helps me plan fast as, about midway through a month, I’m like 75% certain of what’s next if not more.

All of this has made me much more productive – but it may not be for the reasons you think.

Yes, there’s the value of having a tool and a plan of some kind – but you can do that a lot of ways. I’m taking an Agile approach, and that requires me to take an Agile mindset – a focus on adaption, on communication, and on efficiency. The tool reinforces the mindset.  The mindset is what matters.

And the mindset? I’m a lot more relaxed, a lot more effective, and I waste less time.

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

– Steve